John Wick (3 Stars)

Probably not a film to be praised about for it’s script of plot line, it is a simple enough storyline. John Wick (Keanu Reeves), is an retired assassin who has just loss his wife. His wife who knew she was dying organises a gift to her grieving husband in the form of a dog. Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen, Theon Greyjoy in a Game of Thrones) sees Wick’s car and offers to buy it. When Wick refuses, Tarasov breaks into his house and steals the car and kills Wick’s dog.

Unbeknown to Tarasov, he didn’t just break into anyone’s house, he broke into the Baba Yaga (The Boogeyman)’s house. Wick comes out of retirement and back his assassin’s ways to seek revenge for the murder of his dog.

The film is gripping and some of the stunts of brilliant. I think Keanu Reeves is very well suited to the film and gives a great performance, maybe because he has so much empathy with his character giving his personal experiences with loss.

It’s not a film to win for screenplay but in terms of all out violence and a good dose of ‘What the Hell’ did he just do! It’s well worth a watch.

 

Munich (3 Stars)

It’s funny that even when I am taking a break for working on German history I am drawn to German history film topics. Although this film focuses a little more on Israel than Germany. In 1972, The Summer Olympics are held in Germany, during which members of a Palestinian terrorist organisation known as Black September. Walk into a very relaxed Olympics Village and kidnap and eventually massacre 11 members of the Israeli Olympics team in what is known as Operation Iqrit and Biram (which were two Palestinian Christian villages forcibly obtained during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and became part of the State of Israel). The film dramatically shows those events in the opening film.

In revenge for the massacre, Israel launches Operation Wrath of God, under Mossed control. What is surprising is that this is one of Spielberg’s lowest grossing films, one of the reasons for that could be arguably the nature of the topic. It was quite a controversial topic choice, and one which in 2005 had received very little debate of discussion about. Perhaps in somewhere making the film helped bring it out in the open to be discussed. The film itself is interesting and has a lively dialogue throughout and at some points is very white-knuckle interesting. However, I found elements of it quite difficult to follow, and in some areas it became confusing – particularly around the breakdown of the operation.

Elements I particularly liked about this was Eric Bana’s character Avner Kaufman, who is the leader of the operation and his ‘breakdown’ as the operation continues. There are elements of this film I really like and I think it was great, however I don’t think key actors – such as Daniel Craig, were well cast in this film and I don’t think those bad casting decisions bought much to the film.

I thought it was a good and interesting attempt, but it wasn’t brilliant.

Cinderella (3 Stars)

Although a predictable Storyline and one you’ve probably all watched before I did enjoy watching this version of Cinderella. I really like the Brother’s Grimm and I am trying to read them in German at the moment so it is nice to watch them as a film as well. Although largely based on the Children friendly version of the story, this film just breath new life in the beginning of the film – so it is not a rematch of previous films. It also adds new breath with great performances by Cath Blanchett and Helena Bonham Carter. It also had some lovely costumes.

Revenger’s Tragedy (1 Star)

 

I found this film weird, complicated and elements of it just left me puzzled. The film is based on Thomas Middleton’s Jacobean play of the same name, written in 1607. The language of this film is true to the original play and is in Middle English. Yet the film itself is set in a modern day if not slightly futuristic setting, which I didn’t think complimented the film at all. There was elements of the film that just didn’t seem to flow or make sense because they were difficult to interpret with the opposing modern vs. traditional spheres of the film. I felt I had to work to hard to understand the film and in doing so elements of the film were very much lost in translation. It was a fair attempt but I think it needed to be either modernised entirely or kept completely traditional.

The Boy Next Door (4 Stars)

This film has a relatively low Rotten Tomato score, which is not unsurprising. I was a little apprehensive about watching it because I didn’t think it would be good. I was pleasantly surprised. Some scenes were chillingly creepy and produced some chills and genuine excitement, which made up for the films shortcomings of average performances and predictable and dull in places storyline. Ryan Guzman was a thoroughly convincing certified weird psychopath with superficial easy to fall for charm.

It is easy to see why this film was overlooked and it isn’t particularly a game changing in it’s genre but for a chill out easy to watch film that is somewhat exciting whilst not regarding you to think to much, it’s a good film worthy of any rainy day.

Doubt (4 Stars)

After watching Spotlight and being really impressed by the film, I thought I’d look at other films that explore the Catholic Church. I had wanted to see doubt at the time of it’s release but ended up missing it and never got round to seeing it, until now.

The film centres around predominately three characters played by Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. Despite a relatively small class and a lack of complexity to the film in terms of locations and storyline, this film marvels in it’s simplicity. This simplicity allows you to really focus on the relationships of Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep), Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Sister James (Amy Adams) and explores Father Flynn’s relationship with Donald Miller (Joseph Foster). Sister Beauvier seems to take the close nature of the two to be something more than it should be and strives to protect the child. Sister James, at first seeing the good in Father Flynn defends him until her experiences and recollections are altered when discussing them with Sister Beavier.

The extended metaphor of doubt, it sustained throughout the film so there is no clear resolution to the film, which begs the question, what was the relationship between Father Flynn and Donald Miller and was Sister Beauvier right in her suspicions and right to act the way she did.

The film reminds me alot of the song ‘A Thousand Trees’ by the Stereophonics…it only takes one tree to make a thousand matches, it only takes one match to burn a thousand trees.

I can’t help but really feel for sorry for Father Flynn, because I presume it to be innocent until proven guilty and so to tarnish someone’s reputation with only suspicions.

 

The Great Gatsby (5 Stars)

A story ahead of it’s time and one that had been relatively shadowed upon it’s release. The 1920s are seen as a decadent and wondrous time filled with opportunity and promise: The American Dream. Who better to protray the endless hope of achieving the American Dream than the mesmerising Leonardo Dicaprio. He is spell-boundingly brilliant as the man who literally would move heaven and earth to be with the love of his life. He captures innocence, love, ambitious, endless optimism seemingly effortlessly. He is truly a joy to watch.

Fitzgerald’s brilliant story comes to life so beautifully. The decadence and the beauty of the American Dream, and in reality the fact that beneath the luxury and the gilded façade lies the smearing of darkness and dirt.

September (1 1/2 Stars)

This has to be one of the most bizarre movies I have ever seen and I am quite disappointed by it, it is a German film and I normally enjoy German films but this one…I don’t know.

The film is about 4 families/relationships living and how their lives are effected by the 9/11 Terrorist attacks. It’s sort of a snap-shot in time into four families. There is not real storyline and there is no real progression through the film. There are just four stories that sort of meander through the film. It’s a film that leaves you with more unanswered questions rather than solutions and resolutions.

It reminds me a lot of Crash or Brooklyn’s Finest a meandering storyline that tries to be arty and I don’t know, maybe I am missing something, but I just don’t get them. I think this film was lost on me. I’m not a fan of the whole genre of films.

The Revenant (4 Stars)

Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar for best performing actor – and it was very well deserved. I also love watching Leonardo DiCaprio acting, he is wonderful and each character he creates just seems so well created, complex and real. I’ve been wanting to see this film for a long time, because DiCaprio is one of my favourite actors, so I was getting a bit worried I’ll miss it in the cinema due to me being busy and cinema screen times. However, because he won the Oscar, the cinema gave it a bit of a revival so I was able to catch it.

This is not my favourite DiCaprio film, although it was a challenging and a great role and I thought he played it well…I thought that at two and a half hours the film seemed overly long and quite slow. Whilst I can forgive the film for being slow because it is about one man’s rather long and dangerous journal through wilderness America whilst seriously injured. I just thought that perhaps it would have been 20-30 minutes shorter. I thought the pairing of Tom Hardy and DiCaprio worked well…although for some reason Tom Hardy’s accent annoyed me in this film, so I didn’t enjoy his performance as well as I thought I would. Given the length and Tom Hardy, I knocked a star off.

The cinematography in this film was breathtakingly beautiful and some of the amazing film sequences were really nice, it was a beauty to watch. I really would recommend watching this movie. I think I’ll catch it again when it’s out on DVD, maybe I’ll warm to it a little more and rate it higher next time.

Four Minutes (3 Stars)

Four Minutes had an interesting enough storyline, an elderly woman, Traude Krueger (Monica Bleibtreu), is a piano teacher within a Women’s prison, uptake on the lessons is slow so the warden encourages her to find new students. One woman, Jenny Von Loeben (Hannah Herzsprung), with a severe attitude problem turns up and Traude refuses to let her play the piano. With this refusal, Jenny throws a fit of rage and nearly kills a prison warden, but she succeeds and is able to gain access to the piano – where she plays fantastically. Traude senses the Jenny’s talent and agrees to teach her. Traude begins to learn about Jenny and her life whilst together they try to nurture the girl’s talent and overcome her defence mechanism as they try for a prestigious music competition, where the young woman has just four minutes to prove her talent.

The film itself is a little slow, painfully slow in fact and whilst it is interesting I did feel that it’s lack of momentum failed to sustain my interest throughout the film. I don’t suppose the added situation of a very elderly cat, when is losing his marbles helped either. I would have to pause the film every 20 or so minutes to sort out one of his various demands (Food, Outside, Food, Outside, Entertainment, Sort out Confusion, More food…you get the idea). I guess this added level of distraction made the film drag on even longer, which I don’t think was the films fault.

Whilst Bleibtreu and Herzsprung gave gifted performances, I think a lack of script failed to develop this into a true winner of a film, which is a pity.