Automata

There are lots of films about post-apocalyptic worlds featuring robots and other fancy technology. Despite some obvious similarities to Blade Runner and I, Robot there is still enough in Automata to make it worth a watch.

Let's get the similarities out of the way first. There is a lot of moping around in a miserable, dirty, rainy city near the start. This is just a lazy copy of Blade Runner. I didn't even understand why it was raining at all since the city was in the middle of a desert.

And from I, Robot we get a set of rules which are supposed to keep the machines absolutely subservient to non-machines.

Right. I think that's where most reviews end. It's easy to write Automata off as just derivative.

But I think there's more to it.

I liked the idea that people tried to design themselves out of a natural disaster... And failed. We always assume that there's a technical fix for everything. And maybe sometimes there isn't.

It was also clever that the surviving humans turned their hatred onto the agents of their failed intervention, the robots, rather than on themselves. Classic shooting the messenger.

Also maybe prescient that humans made themselves redundant.

SPOILERS

OK. All that is spilled in the first few minutes. So it was nice to discover later that humans didn't actually even design the robots. They made a single AI that designed the robots for them. And which they then turned off because it was smarter than they liked.

At this point I was thinking that maybe it was smart enough to make robots that could evolve past the rules... Which of course is what happened.

The good old law of unintended consequences wins again.

So. The film is a bit lazy, borrows a lot from classic sci-fi and doesn't really surprise much at the end.

But, if you are going to borrow, borrow from the best. And not every thriller has to have an unexpected ending.

Yes, it could have been better. But I still think Automata is a good film, with some interesting ideas and a cautionary message.

Enjoyed it.

Amazon closer to killing LoveFilm

Amazon have moved another step closer to killing off LoveFilm By Post.

When they first took over Amazon made a complete mess of the transition. There was a lot of confusion, the website was badly broken and tying streaming video to their Prime delivery service just seemed weird.

But the price was right. I quickly dropped the Prime video service because it never worked well for me and the selection was poor. Which left me with unlimited disk rental for £4 a month. Fine.

That didn't last long though. As many people predicted the price soon went up. I found myself paying £8 a month for the same service.

I say the same service. It was actually poorer service than I ever got from LoveFilm. A few examples:

1) Patchy delivery

May be a coincidence, but there have been more delays and longer delays in turnaround since Amazon. I usually watch films on a Friday and Saturday night, posting disks back on Monday morning. With LoveFilm I always had new disks before Friday. With Amazon I sometimes don't get disks until Saturday or even after the weekend.

2) Dirty disks

With Amazon I often have to clean the disks carefully before they will play on my machine. Again, might be a coincidence or maybe Amazon are lazy about maintaining their stock.

3) Rubbish website

The Amazon site is geared to buying stuff not renting. Recommendations were a great feature of LoveFilm but all that is gone with Amazon. Most of the time you are shown films you have already seen, to try and make you buy the disk.

You can't even see all the films you have rented on the Amazon site. Just the last 200. I have been on LoveFilm since 2005 so I have probably rented over 1000 films by now.

It is very frustrating when you are searching for new films to watch and most of the results are either films you have seen or films you think you might have seen but can't quite remember.

I have suggested to Amazon several times that they need an option to exclude films you have already seen from searches. Each time I get a reply that says "you can see your last 200 rentals on this page...". Argh!!!!!

And now I read in the media that there is another price hike due in February 2016. My service will go up to £12 a month. According to the Amazon website I should have had an email in October telling me this... But I didn't.

This is the last straw. Not because £12 a month is too much, yet. But because the trajectory is clearly set. Amazon don't give a shit about disk rental and clearly want to kill it off.

They are doing it slowly so as not to alienate too many people in one go.

Well I am out. And you know what Amazon? I have found myself using your services for other things less and less as you have treated me badly as a LoveFilm By Post customer. Now that I am leaving you, maybe I won't shop on your site at all.

LoveFilm was a great service. Amazon have destroyed it.

The Ghost

Just catching up on reviews I didn't get round to at the time of watching.

Can't remember much about the Ghost, other than I enjoyed it, it was quite spooky, it was clever and had a "ah, I see" ending.

So I guess enjoyable but unmemorable would be a fair summary :)

X+Y

A story about maths geniuses doesn't sound like it would be very interesting. But x+y is good because it concentrated on the people not the maths... Which I wouldn't have understood... Although the maths they did show I did understand so I guess they really dumbed that down!

It is supposed to be based on a true story. But I did some research afterwards and I think that should be "loosely based on a collection of true stories".

I did buy into it though and really enjoyed it. Apart from the last 10 minutes. The ending wasn't just unconvincing... It seemed completely opposed to the rest of the film. Shame. But I still quite enjoyed it over all.

The Signal

Another good low-budget sci-fi film. In fact for a long time it's not even clear whether it is a sci-fi or a mystery or something else.

I liked that. Making the most of a low budget means getting a good story and good performances. The Signal has that.

Maybe the ending could have been better. It was a little bit over the top for me. But it got the final message across clearly, which is more important.

Keeping Rosy

There are a couple of details near the beginning of Keeping Rosy that made me exclaim "no way!" out loud.

But you just have to put that behind you as quickly as possible and move on. Because the performance of Maxine Peake as a woman who's life gradually disintegrates is something to behold.

She is simply brilliant.

Soon the slightly implausible situation is forgotten and you are just hoping she can start making better choices. But of course she doesn't. And things get worse and worse. Even when she thinks she's being careful she still ends up making things worse.

It is one of those films that leaves you thinking you're glad you've never been put into such a tight spot.

I did see the ending coming... But only a few seconds before it happened. So I think that was very well done, since the options are left very open until almost the end.

Maxine Peake is possibly my favorite actor at the moment. Everything I have seen her in has been good.

Ida

Just realised that I forgot to post something about Ida. Which is a shame because I really enjoyed it. And it has so much to it that I can see it being studied on media studies courses for years to come.

Technically it is very clever. Perhaps too clever for me... I understood why it was in black and white but not the 4x3 aspect ratio. Monochrome is great for the atmosphere and also Ida's hair colour is hidden from us at the start. Narrow picture though... Is that supposed to make it claustrophobic? On my TV it was just a bit annoying ... probably a lot better on the big screen.

There are scenes where the framing puts the characters at the bottom of the screen. Which would be great if the subtitles weren't right over their faces. Bit of a mistake in the multilingual department of the process there.

Story-wise it is a real treat too. At the beginning you see a nun and think it might be a bit dull and worthy. Then she meets her aunt and we go off on a real journey of discovery... In several senses.

There are surprises. Some good and some bad. The ending wasn't what I expected... It was better.

Predestination

I like time travel movies. Even complicated ones. Although I had to watch Primer three times before I understood it...

Predestination is complicated too. But it explains itself nicely as it goes along. There are plenty of mysterious events, but clues abound. I found myself just about guessing what would happen as it happened... But only just before, and not always.

The structure gives you the feeling that you are gradually being let into some big secrets. Some of the reveals seem outrageous at first and then make sense a few minutes later.

By the end I was thinking that I needed to draw out timelines for each of the characters to check that I'd got it right.

Clever. And fun.

In Order Of Disappearance

On one level this is a fairly standard Norwegian revenge thriller staring Stellan Skarsgard.

But it is really well done.

And it almost falls into the realms of a black comedy. But not in the sense that it is actually funny... Instead I found myself wanting to laugh as an outlet for my shock at some of the extreme actions that the characters execute.

That's clever. And I enjoyed the film. Even though I thought that I probably shouldn't be enjoying it.

Beware the man who has nothing to lose. He can do anything he wants!

Rurouni Kenshin 2 & 3

I reviewed the first Rurouni Kenshin movie as a stand alone film. And it was at the time. It seems that it was successful enough to warrant sequels and the producers were smart enough to have signed up the cast for possible extensions.

When I watched part 2 I didn't realise that it was going to be a trilogy. So even though I enjoyed the film, it seemed to end a bit abruptly. At least there wasn't a long wait for part 3 as they were shot together.

Part 3 seemed a bit too long. There wasn't much to the story.

In all three parts the cast are great and the atmosphere created is wonderful. The action scenes are brilliant and spread cleverly through the movies.

What is missing though is a convincing story arc that holds it all together. Everything we need to know is already revealed in part 1. So the rest of the story feels tacked on... Because it is.

I think it would have been better to create a completely new separate story for part 2 and another for part 3.

Mythica: A Quest for Heroes

Give it a chance, I thought. Partly funded by a kickstarter campaign and with a name that shouts "first of a series". This was always unlikely to be mind blowingly good.

But it is OK.

I enjoyed watching it.

There are plenty of holes that I could pick in it. The only one that I will really mention here is that the blurb says " starring Kevin Sorbo" when actually he's only in a couple of scenes near the beginning.

Apart from the misleading advertising then, the rest of the film makes good use of the resources it has available. There is limited CGI but what there is has a big impact.

The cast are OK. None of them are going to win an Oscar for this, but they haven't hobbled their careers either.

The script avoids the worst kinds of clichés and doesn't try to over explain the plot. If anything we are left in the dark a bit too much... More world building would have helped strengthen the series.

I believe there is a sequel made. And I might well watch it one day. But I don't think the basic story is original enough to hang a significant run of movies on.

Addicted

Sometimes when I am not really enjoying a film on DVD / Blu-ray I just fast forward through the rest to find out what happens.

I'm not sure what it says about Addicted that I didn't do that... I just abandoned it about half way in instead.

Of course, I know what happens through the power of Wikipedia.

I don't even really understand why I didn't enjoy the half of the film I watched. On paper it is the sort of thing I like.

Maybe I was just in the wrong mood.

Maybe the poor video quality didn't help. In places it looked like a rapidly converted TV format.

Everything felt a bit rubbish... Who knows?

If this is a favorite film of yours then let me know if you think I should give it another chance sometime.

Still Life

This is a lovely little film. And by little I just mean low budget, low key, not small in any patronising way.

It is quite complex, building up slowly. It took me a while to spot that whenever Eddie Marsan's character went out onto the street there was never anyone else in shot. So subtly we get to see how totally alone this man is.

He represents the safety net that society offers. Die alone and there will at least be one person who notices. We employ him to care so that we don't have to.

I wondered if he did the job because he had always been alone himself, or if he became more alone over time because of his job. I don't remember there being many clues to that.

Towards the end, when he is working on his last case, he clearly starts to live himself (again?). And the contrasts are portrayed beautifully.

Just when I thought we were heading for a happy ending there is a surprise. I guess I should have seen it coming (looking back there were plenty of hints) but I didn't.

I thought it wasn't fair at first, but it just had to end like that. It moved me to tears.

And it made me think, not just about people who have died alone, but people who are living alone right now. How can we fix that? Why do we find it so easy to not care about our neighbors any more?

The Babadook

I wanted to like this, but didn't. The cast are good but the story isn't and the script isn't.

As things went on I just felt sorry for the poor single mother left to look after that bloody annoying child.

Jeez he was annoying. And just got more and more so. No wonder she went off the rails.

And so it wasn't scary, because I was just rattled by how annoying the boy was and how unfortunate his mother was to be stuck with him.

Leviathan

This is an award winning film about life in Russia. The cinematography is very good. The setting is bleak. The characters lead bleak lives.

I didn't enjoy watching it.

The Drop

I am a fan of Tom Hardy. I think he is a great actor. So I got this film because he is in it, despite the rather dull sounding summary.

There are other famous actors in it too. Apparently it was the late James Gandolfini's last role. And the rather lovely but hard to spell Noomi Rapace features too.

The story is quite good. Bob finds an injured dog in a trash can. I spent the rest of the film worrying that the dog would get hurt again by the previous evil owner.

Oh, and some people get beaten up and killed too.

SPOILERS

I'm not going to go over the whole plot. It is very clever though how everything seems to be going on around Bob with him helpless. And yet you always feel that he could do more if he wanted... Couldn't he?

Is he really going to give all that money to Deeds for the dog? No of course he isn't. What do you think the gun is for?

But then when Bob confesses to Deeds that he killed the man Deeds was notorious for killing... You don't even have time to take it in before Bob shoots Deeds.

Which captures Bob perfectly. He goes under the radar. Surprises everyone, including the viewer. He's got the drop on us.

So at the end you realise that the title isn't about the money, it's about Bob.