No, no, no. No Maggie here.

A rather short, poor old lady narrates us the awesome life of Margaret Thatcher. Oh yes, this version of Meryl Streep is supposed to be Maggie in 2012, or at least the Maggie shaped by Phyllida Lloyd’s imagination. Quite a commercial success and a personal achievement of Oscar winner Meryl.

The objective is to describe Thatcher not as much as a political figure but rather as a working woman, former grocer’s daughter, mother, ambitious youngling and stubborn wife. An “Iron Lady” that is, parallel to the politician but not exactly the politician; obviously this is not incompatible with reality. Thatcher was nothing but a politician.

The director uses the flashback technique rather too often; this bouncing from present to past and vice-versa does little to contribute to the storyline, nor it gives a flow to the narration. Some stops at Thatcher’s life moments seem a bit dull.

And while you’re yawning carefree and lay your lazy hand searching for more pop-corn, you violently get jarred by Maggie Streep’s screech in a moment of in-House hysteria directed to the opposition leader. 

Ok, well, I get it; it’s not a political film. Then why “Iron Lady”? How’s the film justifying the title? How can you detach a politician from her good or bad deeds but you can show bits of IRA, Thatcherism, the war on the unions? Why did this woman feel guilt, if so, anyway?

There’s that young, ambitious, almost sexy girl starring early in the film striving to prove herself in a manly world. How sad; admirable; I feel sympathetic, but, hey, this is NOT Maggie. Dunno how you call her, but it’s not Maggie.

 

Excellent, chic, up-to the date costumes. And of course, was there any real actor in this film, other than Meryl Streep? Surely Thatcher is the central figure, but this would all be stronger if others would actually play.

This is an indifferent piece, deceitful, charming and not suitable for a nice slam! In the end, one does not see how cool - or not - Thatcher was as a leader, but more like how awesome Streep would make of a prime minister.

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Stand down grandpa!

Certainly a film starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin can be considered as “vintage”. Three decadent gangsters catch up with each other and recall old times. One is still fresh from jail, the other left adventure to be a sunset painter and the third is wired up on an elderly care center bed.

This epic story starts with Pacino getting out of jail and Walken picking him up, as having nothing better to do. However there’s this mystery in the air while they meet again. Walken has taken up to assassinate Pacino within a day and totters between professionalism and friendship. But by the time they start hanging around again they decide to enjoy life like buddies. They even go brothel-hopping, making the film surpass the boundaries of aesthetics...

So for the most part we are shown the adventures of the two grandpa’s. Later Arkin joins the drill as well. On top of all this we are asked to sympathize with Walken’s dramatic dilemma; to kill or not to kill Pacino?? Even though it’s something the film would naturally focus on, it doesn’t! Instead, there’s an attempt to surprise us by reminding the “mission”. But believe me, nobody is surprised.

Right before a totally weird ending we get the honor to watch Pacino’s confession to a priest (like it would ever be to a judge...). Arkin’s already dead and I tried to decipher the unfathomable fact that his daughter hasn’t shed a single tear. Omg, Cry you bitch! He was your damn father!

Stand Up Guys is a movie that fulfills all conditions - interesting plot, powerful stars, nice music etc. - to present a fast, funny and lively adventure; nevertheless it winds up to an often boring experience with a few exceptions of real action and cute humor.

Admittedly the script and direction won’t easily let the actors’ talent unfold, as their personalities outweigh their roles. I would note though their costumes design goes back to the 60s. You can almost smell the staleness that emerges from the vivid view of them.

To be honest such reunions and come-backs by old celebrities make me a bit nervous. It feels like it’s a eulogy for all their movie portfolio. While they play it’s like they tell you “There’ll be no more!”.

Well, I’ll live for more! Cheers

 

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Blockbusting theory #1

My first post on theory crafting snatches on a weird paper I found a few months ago while net-surfing. Before showing it to you I'll just introduce my gagged rationale.


Now let's all admit movie reviewing is something almost everybody can do. Reviews and critiques pop out in every portal, vortal, newspaper, online bulletin and wherever, like wild flowers during spring.

But the truth is not everyone can do it well. Why? Because there is no natural law or academic axiom saying in a plain way what makes a good movie or a bad one. There are thousands of viewpoints and angles to "read" a film from, inasmuch as many parameters there are.

 

Normally there would be some contemporary theory crafting on how we can judge a film. Like, say, from the nice good old experts: academics, cultural scientists and performing arts researchers. But it's stunning that today most academic literature on movie reviews pays no attention to the reviewing process itself. In fact it elaborates on the effect reviews and critics have on the film industry, instead of ever giving a tip on how it's done.

 

It's sad to know most researchers, professors and film/media students just drain their talent and thinking capacity in order to see how much more or less money a film will make because of the reviews. People in the film industry want to make money - which is very reasonable to a very great extent, as it's their business; but I expect more from the wise guys.

 

This is what I talked about in the beginning of this post then:

 

We conclude that text features from pre-release reviews can substitute for and improve over a strong metadata-based first-weekend movie revenue prediction.

In simple English this means that "we can say how much $$ a film can make the premiere weekend by reading what critics say". Taken from the paper "Movie Reviews and Revenues: An Experiment in Text Regression", this is the conclusion of four US based Carnegie Mellon University authors (Mahesh Joshi, Dipanjan Das, Kevin Gimpel, Noah A. Smith). Oh really...you don't say.

Certainly I don't doubt these people's work, neither their dedicated methods; but really this is all about money and gives a nice business tool to the industry but nothing to me as a subject of cinematography art.

There are many other examples of scientific resources spent for this kind of business purposes. I have to keep looking for a more suitable start for my Movie Gag theory...

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Welcome, but no punch

Even for me it’s hard to jabber much about “Welcome to the punch”. Its plot is a clutter and it struggles to attract my interest.

Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong) is an ex-criminal enjoying his inactive retired years in icy Iceland. However when he’s son is arrested in Heathrow airport he’s got to return to London, where old friend detective Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy) follows him everywhere hoping to arrest him by mistake and finally have some self-esteem.

Max’s figure is deeply hang-up and constantly eager to be the smart-ass. He plays the defender of the weak and generally resembles that school goody-goody nerd we all knew. All attempts to restore or justify Max’s weird attitude shall fail. Personally I tried hard and many times to like him during the film.

On the other hand, Sternwood drives you bonkers with his affluent even temper. He’s almost indifferent, for his age, and for some reason manages to earn our sympathy.

The film apparently wishes not to be remembered for its bold characters and their appealing to the viewer, since everything happens in tiresome calmness.

On top of that the two heroes start to respect each other and fight for the restoration of justice in which both happen to believe.

Scriptwriter and director Eran Creevy had a good idea to make a film with 2 men starring, no women and no sex. Well the effort could be better. You can only see faces and dubious “action”, while the first complete sentence is heard later than 10 minutes. Resolution comes in 2 minutes and suspense forgot to come.

I’m gonna avoid saying anything more for the music apart from the fact it sounded like it was coming from an electrocardiogram machine.

Perhaps “Welcome to the punch” had ambitions to suggest something original, different to the mainstream Hollywood action/adventure genre. Well, they were too high.

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Broken City: vote for the wig!

Mark Wahlberg plays former police officer Billy Taggart, now a private detective in the new action movie by Allen Hughes “Broken City”. The title refers to no other city than New York during the pre-election period for local governors.

There are two candidates: Nicholas Hostetler and Jack Valliant. One is bad, the other is good, as in such films there is no other option, you gotta accept it. This battle between good and evil has become so trivial! Like we couldn’t see vegetarians vs meat lovers, or Lady Gaga fans vs Rihanna fans... Please!

Naturally, no case, no crime, no punishment, no pre-election campaign can take place without a couple of sexy women legs. The law of Hollywood here is impenetrable and clear, no exceptions. So the leg-role is given to Catherine Zeta Jones, playing the insatiably charming and mysterious wife of Russel, who for some reason I strongly believe wears a wig. Ah, old age doesn’t come alone... How one can fall from being a sexy gladiator to running for office... Following Arnold’s steps, even though the latter become a governor, which is more impressive I’d say.

Billy Taggart commits a murder then due to excessive enthusiasm. As a result, his badge, gun and macho attitude are taken away from him and he ends up as a private detective dealing with lover cheats, squabbles, petty larcenies and such. Obviously this transformation from a criminal hunter to a family fortune teller has broken his spirit, it’s not exactly an alternative... Mayor Hostetler however hires him to find his wife’s lover and Billy begins to remember old times. Things like financial scandals make it complicated though.

Action comes in place basically when Catherine appears. I have to admit she’s really, really impressive. Now the scriptwriter messes up what was unfolding as a quite interesting plot by choosing to collate many different stories and events to keep suspense up. In the end we watch a bunch of irrelevant scenes. For instance, I don’t really think it was necessary to learn about how the sister of Billy’s wife died. Generally Billy’s love life is as boring as a cartoon and, despite so, the film talks about it for just too long!

One more thing. Billy breaks up with his wife because he was too jealous seeing her starring in a porn film. Here Hollywood needs to pay some attention; you can’t have two inapt people fuck each other like there’s no tomorrow and then call this “art”. Ok, this was my thought.

Anyway, later in the film we follow Billy’s endeavour to resolve the Hostetler case that now includes murder, weird alliances, manhunting, debates and of course scandals. A pre-election cycle has never been so much fascinating!

Good and evil intertwines perfectly. Yes! In this film the bad guy is Russel!! He’s finally not wretched, not the victim, not the sexy guy!I won’t comment on the ending, as it’s the top moment when justice is done! For all. For everything. It’s at least surrealistic...
I can say Wahlberg sells as a good decayed detective, even though he turns a little rough sometimes that make him look like a football fan after his team lost the cup. Or, worse, like a doorkeeper who just got his door poohed by a Juck Russel puppy. Dear Mark, you ain’t got rough mate!

Russel gives a well performed sleazy ‘n’ smarmy guy. The wig helps a lot!Catherine is just... gorgeous!

On the other hand, Barry Pepper is a fail-choice. His face radiates permanent misery, which climaxes while he grieves the death of his friend. He’s like an ancient Greek woman mourning during a tragedy for the loss of Thebes city!
To be honest action scenes keep low and are too predictable. Even so, the screenplay flows nicely with enough well given humour and the title "Broken City" was a successful pick to describe badass corruption within politics and finance.

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I thought they'd switch bodies :o

No gagging can be enough for this one! Α silly, indifferent parody of a comedy with very few actual comic means and endless baloney floating on screen for about one and a half hour.

 

Identity Thief. For starters. A random fat woman with many names steals the identity of Sandy Paterson to live better by overindulging spending that even a super-consumerist fashion victim would find too much. Let’s call her Diana since she kept this name and we can’t argue with 473 pounds of human mass...

Sandy is an accounting director in a big company, married with two daughters. He’s looking forward to a promotion but he ends up with his thumb up his butt.

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Diana, who’s psychologically mental, tries to fill in all her psychotic vacuums with various tricks. Using Sandy’s money then she revels and has a good time out, even when threatening to hang herself from a chandelier.

 

Sandy starts to grasp what’s going on and searches for the identity thief. After 25 mins and another 25 yawns, we see him playing policeman to hunt down Diana. He finds her place in Colorado, which looks like a telemarketing store with chinese stuff, and from now on we got Action!

 

The film tries so hard to be a good adventure comedy, I can’t comment on how much suspense it made to bring. It can’t find anything more original than car crashes, while the amount of funniness in Sandy’s helpless effort to convince everyone his name is unisex runs out very fast. The same applies for the “broken-dick” card, Diana’s clumsiness, boring scenes like that sumo sex-fight, throw-up scenes and saliva.

As for those drama situations, where the director tries to make us sympathize a fat person bearing a bunch of complexes, and the causality system he uses, are just not good enough. Maybe for a Golden Berry award...

After 100 mins of movie here comes a namby-pamby, boring, almost predictable ending. Melissa McCarthy uses her natural appearance to play her role, which she does well. Jason Bateman probably realizes the plot can’t compete and therefore he doesn’t bother to act with less fatigue. All in all, it's them who hold the story from fading.

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Addicted to magic

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit. You don’t say? One can easily see that by his badly done hair, his peppy little look and splay furry feet. Other than that he’s quite a nice, clean and well-mannered hobbit living in Shire, the hobbits’ hometown in Middle Earth. It really looks like the Smurfs’ village.

 

One day while Bilbo’s gazing carefree, Gandalf the Gray wizard pays him an ostensibly feckless visit. Later however a bunch of ruffie dwarves occupy almost invade his house for no apparent reason. Thorin, their leader, is determined to take back his homeland that was destroyed by a greedy dragon obsessed with gold. Honestly, I don’t need to comment on the vanity of a dragon’s avaricious nature..

Anyway, the dwarves abuse Bilbo’s home perks and devoured all his stock of meat snacks (at least they washed the dishes). They arrogantly ask him to follow them to their quest, as if they do him a favour. Even so the kind hobbit accepts for the sake of old times - he used to be an adventurer despite his looks - and joins them.

Of course, evil is surprisingly active these days and the fellowship almost asks for it. They fall on some fat Trolls, bearing the flu virus and eating anything gross. Not the best scene to watch while having pop-corn... How nice; Gandalf saved the day again like the canary in a coal mine. Mister leader Thorin only knows to play grumpy far so. Not much of a warrior huh?

 

Later they are jumped on by orcs on wargs, but they manage to escape thanks to the looney brown wizard Radagast, old pal of Gandalf. Thorin’s been dawdling again... In fact during almost the whole campaign he merely gives meaningless orders and then refuses to ask the Elves for help because suddenly recalls that they’ve been away some time 600 years ago. Hey snooty, you’re not exactly the king of everything!

Eventually Gandalf leads Thorin to Rivendell, as a nice tricky old bastard wizzy he is. They look too dirty and messed up to appear before the eternally glamorous elves. There Gandalf meets Lord Elrond, Lady Galadriel and the not so pleasant Saruman the White wizard. My strong guess is that if Gandalf wasn’t Gandalf he’d really fancy the blond sorceress.

Meanwhile the dwarves slip away as the council expectedly does not approve their roundabouts. Many beautiful beings stand in their way like stone giants and filthy orcs. Bilbo realizes he’s got to do the daily home cleaning and decides to leave, but he’s lost. Like this wasn’t enough, he encounters the renowned slimy creature called Gollum. The Gollum’s split personality manifests while it attempts to beat Bilbo in a game of riddles. I won’t comment on what happened here because it was interesting to watch. What is important is that Bilbo changed his mind and came back to the dwarves. Hobbits are not quite stable characters, don’t ever marry one! You’ll suffer.

Once things have escalated to a weird manhunt and as we’ve met all semi-sane creature of the planet, there we got the final encounter. Dwarves and orcs are to fight. Of course the first are hopeless and Gandalf saves the day again. Ok, it’s become trivial. Bilbo saves Thorin from being butchered by the big Orc’s axe and in the end Gandalf recovers his life. Now you tell me this dwarf is a leader? I mean, I wouldn’t bet on him in an MTV reality!

While waiting for the next part of the trilogy: it’s a plot with some noticeable vacuums and it doesn’t let you sympathize any of the dwarves. They live, they die, we don’t give a damn; we know nothing about their personality. As always, screenplay a la Peter Jackson is a job well done.

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Age doesn't come alone

There’s no need for introductions. He’s been introducing himself for over 50 years. In all countries and places, to friends and foes, women and men. His name is Bond, James Bond.

 


007’s 23rd film, through the slightly cyan-colored direction of Sam Mendes, starts with raw action. Bond is in Istanbul with Eve, a pretty girl of course who’s none other than Miss Moneypenny, chasing an evil agent called Patrice. Why is he evil? Well, he’s stolen some files with all NATO’s agents in terrorist organizations all over the world. These secrets could harm secret agencies globally, including MI6, Bond’s employer. After all, he’s a worker as well...

 

The first encounter then takes place in a bazaar, somehow like this: Bond hunts down the bad guy by all possible vehicles. Eve is following them while being on an open line with dear M, the British secret services’ chief. The mess is as good as you can guess. They smash fruits and vegetables, they tear apart beautiful Persian carpets, they run over some extremely resilient rooftops, they ruin three car dealer shows, they compete in train-wagon stand-up kick-boxing and finally fail Eve shoots at Bond and loses him at the bottom of a waterfall.

 

If you thought for a moment that Bond might be dead, sorry, you need to have your brain tested. Hellooo! It’s freaking Bond and the star of a blockbuster; can’t die like this for starters! After the fiasco, the plot gets interesting. MI6 headquarters are quite compromised, M’s leadership even more and everyone thinks Bond is dead. And useless. So there are more than enough reasons for him to come back, clean up the mess and make himself a hero. Again.

 

The thing is, Bond - let alone Daniel Craig - is not exactly a cradle to be robbed any more. The hunk’s got old; he’s tired, he’s got symptoms of early Parkinson, some dark crinkles having a party around his eyes. His stamina is collapsing! Nevertheless, the new great MI6 quest in upon him.

 

First he’s going to Shanghai after Patrice again. This time he does it in a civilized manner confronting him inside a modern futuristic building. Patrice dies nicely and a desperate woman called Sévérine promises Bond to lead him to the boss of all evils in the story. He ends up on an island much like a Lucky Luke scenery - where’s the saloon and the Daltons? - and finally the devil reveals himself.

 

Javier Bardem plays old foe Raoul Silva in a quite unique way and with a certain surplus of talent in comparison with Craig. Well Silva is even farther away from handsomeness, having a weirdly dyed blond hair and eyebrows, not to mention the horse - though clean - denture. I’d say his look is heading straight to to a John Galiano version! Sorry Javier!

 

After a series of events Bond and M find themselves at MI6’s basement trying to explore Silva’s hundreds of mental issues and troubled past. The session continues as a manhunt at the London Tube, as it’s a common nerve-breaking habit of secret agents to absolutely ignore other people’s presence. Can’t you at least yell something like “Move!” or “Sorry, I’m after the bad guy”. No, they really have to step on poor fellas returning home after a hard-worked day.

Bond’s failure transfers action to Skyfall, a site in the middle of nowhere. While waiting for Silva’s hit and cursing her bad luck for not being given Thatcher’s role, M flirts with the caretaker despite the cultural shock; she makes explosives using her French-ly manicured fingers.

 

I can’t but note here Silva’s self referring existence during his invasion to the wretched manor. Yes, it was kitsch!

 

Also, though I’m not usually generous, I should acknowledge Adele’s music here deserved the Oscar.

 

All in all, a pretty much interesting Bond sequel with suspense and subversiveness. Craig starred excellently as a tired agent. He really plays “tired” better than “gorgeous”. Naomi Harris is colorless and hardly sexy, while Berenice Marlohe did a noteworthy attempt to  play femme-fatale.

 

My love for M, Judi Dench that is, cannot be objective. She’s such a bitch that I see myself.

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