What I watched this week...
I've been enjoying my online rentals this week, so I've seen a lot of stuff I missed out on in theatres last year. There's too much here to go into full reviews, so I thought I would try and break-it-down for you guys in this compact article.
So basically, this is what I thought of some of the movies I missed out on last year.
My wait to see this film was almost as epic as the time span depicted in The Fountain but in the end was it worth the wait? Well, it's a stunning film... easily one of the most beautiful and visually inventive movie I've seen in years. However, just like Danny Boyle's Sunshine earlier this year, The Fountain is an empty film which has very little weight to accommodate it's images.
The three intercutting narratives are extremely pretentious and contrived, something out of a conventionally bad genre movie when placed in their own context. Director Darren Aronofsky asks all the important questions about life but gives you no answers at all. This film truly has nothing to say and for that it's 100% worthless.
I found it fascinating watching Infamous, another take on the life of Truman Capote and his relationship with Perry Smith so soon after the movie Capote in 2005. Both films are eerily similar, obviously in subject matter but remarkably in filmic style too. Both directors Douglas McGrath (Infamous) and Bennett Miller (Capote) choose many of the same camera angles and choose to shoot the same kind of scenes.
Capote is clearly the better film as it's take on the character of Truman is more complex and deeper than Infamous ever goes into, however I enjoyed Toby Jones' performance a lot more than I did Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar winning role. They are both fine actors, but I found Jones' portrayal to be more sympathetic and warmer.
Another plus for Infamous is the casting of Daniel Craig as the intense Perry White. What a performance from the actor who remarkably performs on so many different levels for his character and his scenes with Jones are superbly made.
So basically Capote is the better film, but Infamous I enjoyed so much more and despite it's more "conventional biopic narrative", the performances of Jones & Craig were outstanding.
The film peaks after three minutes. There's nothing funnier than Hugh Grant doing a Wham and Duran Duran style parody of 80's pop music videos with that god awful but catchy pop tune... but it's all down hill from there, and fast.
The forced relationship between Grant and co-star Drew Barrymore hurt the film, they had zero romantic chemistry although they were quite funny as a comedic duo.
Grant did his best to make this bad script sound funny with his typical dry humour but he couldn't save this tedious rom-com. An instantly forgettable flick.
What an amazing film Apocalypto is. I truly wasn't expecting to be as excited, enthralled and at times absolutely terrified for the fate of these Mayan characters from over a thousand years ago.
Apocalypto tells the simple story of man's struggle to survive, in a tight narrative that ends up just being about one character running from his death. This is a beautiful film on an epic level that even eclipses The Passion of the Christ. As I'm writing this, I'm still not sure I have fully recovered from my experience watching this film, I was so drained with emotion.
Mel Gibson keeps taking on projects where your wondering, is this guy in insane? Movies in different languages set thousands of years ago with unknown actors but he keeps knocking them out of the ball park.
This is without doubt one of the best films of 2006 and a great metaphor for where society is at today.
I can't get over the imagery. I wasn't bothered about the language, I can't even remember one line of dialogue from the subtitles but the visuals will stay with me forever.
Now there is one thing you should probably know about me and that is I absolutely hate musicals. I find them to be the most painful things to sit through as people just randomly break into song and sing about their troubles, clogging up the pacing as we have to endure the unbelievably contrived plot points.
And they are all the god damn same. Once you have seen one musical film, you have seen them all!
Dreamgirls is no different. It's a conventional musical with no substance and no heart, and personally I found it to be one of the most uninteresting movies of the year. Jennifer Hudson impresses in her debut film role but that's just about the only positive thing I can say about this terrible film.
I finally got round to seeing Forest Whitaker's Oscar winning performance and boy did he deserve it. He is absolutely off the charts in this, one of the most frightening and spot on portrayals of any evil dictator I have ever seen.
He has those teddy bear eyes and child like deamnor which is show frightening on someone so evil. He has those piercing looks that make you absolutely shiver with fear. That voice that shudders straight into your ear drum and accelerates all the way down to your terrified heart.
This is an exciting thriller with the backdrop of a fascinating character study of Idmi Amin. James McAvoy should get tons of credit for carrying the film with easily his best performance to date and. I would have liked either less of Gillian Anderson's character or more of her, as her bit part role in the film did nothing to interest me but the moments with McAvoy and Kerry Washington I enjoyed as it broke up the furiously intense moments with Whitaker.
Who really does give the performance of an absolute lifetime.