Sunday 28 June 2009

Quick general views on films seen

Been a little busy recently, thus few updates but here are some comments on films I have seen.

Lets starts with the worst, The Invasion. A truly wretched film. I never thought you could mess up Invasion Of The Body Snatchers but this managed it. Its just awful. The first half is full of wandering scenes with dull dialogue that feels to be unmatching to what we just saw. There is no scene that adds tension. Its just a collection of shots with no dramatic purpose. Then suddenly the film has fits and starts into action that don't make much sense and make the situation even more confusing and dull. Or maybe I just fell asleep. Its obviously been hacked around but there's little to suggest a film that was ever any good (in fact the obviously added on ending is actually more fun than the rest of the film).

Now onto a film that got a lot of bad notice but wasn't so bad (at least visually) The Happening. Yes the film has terrible dialogue and acting to match. As everyone acts the same unfocused way you have to blame the director as they couldn't all have made the same duff acting decisions. Some of the dialogue is laughable. And yet the film has many terrific silent sequence, simply of wind blowing, people losing the ability to want to stay alive. If the film was a silent movie it would have been much better.

Finally a no-holds-barred good monster movie The Mist. A group of people trapped in a supermarket after a mist falls on a town, with many monsters within the mist. While the set-up sounds hokey its played for real, from the point of view of people in the situation acting like normal people (some are suicidal, some go religious). While under pressure, things get out of hand between the survivors and they start killing one another eventually, due to basic human weakness. The ending, although badly scored, has a terrific punch as its pretty ballsy. This one is like Tremors or Arachnophobia. It takes a b-movie premise and elevates it due to simple craft and focus.

Terminator Salvation: A decent enough film, not really worthy of the ire its been getting. Its main trouble is that its not very surprising and that the Terminator TV show did a lot more with character detail and expanding the world than this managed, even with all the money it had. Christian Bale is actually fine as John Connor. Not as good as he's been in other films but he did his job. And the future world was interesting to a degree, in that you've seen it all before but it worked in a b-movie way. I think this film is getting the rage than Terminator 3 deserved. Its not a film that's ripe for rediscovery but its fine. In the fun movie blockbuster stage Star Trek is much better but I can imagine Transformers 2 will be much worse. I can imagine now that the Terminator TV show will be the best remembered follow-up to the first two films.

Drag Me To Hell is a riot. Its incredibly shallow but that's not a criticism. The film is simply a scarefest, best seen in an audience full of screaming people. It has loads of sick images and cheap scares but simply delivers on what is needed.

Have been watching some Fassbinder films and Angelopolous but those would take a more thorough posting than I have time for at the moment, as they are a lot more thoughtful, as well as the masterpiece Satantango.

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