Because Everybody Else Has One

Another late review but I've been a bit busy for the last week with writing for which actually get paid. Also, I missed the press screening for this so I paid to see it last week. Not that I would ever complain about paying for a new Wes Anderson film, of course, but still... Like every Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom will work brilliantly for Wes Anderson fans, but will probably leave everyone else wondering what the hell they just sat through. If you've seen the likes of Rushmore or the Royal Tenenbaums, you should know what you're in for and whether or not Anderson's very idiosyncratic form of storytelling works for you. If you've never sampled anything from Anderson's oeuvre, though, then Moonrise Kingdom might actually not be a bad place to start - just prepare yourself for plenty of whimsy, deadpan comedy and wry drama, all filtered through a directorial style that is the very definition of ironic detachment. It may not be his best film, but it...

Oh, I wish I liked this more... Also at Channel 24 What it's about After the calamitous events at Lake Victoria, the prehistoric piranhas set their sites on a new target: Big Wet, a water park that is set to open just in time to draw massive crowds for the start of spring break. It's up to the daughter of the greedy and corrupt owner of Big Wet to stop her father from opening the park and causing an even bigger massacre than the one that occurred the summer before. What we thought Thanks to Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders, we already know that there's a thin line between love and hate, but who knew that the line awesome and awful would be thinner still. When I reviewed Piranha 3D a couple of years ago, I noted that it was about as good a piece of unapologetically exploitative trash as you could hope to find. It was the sort of the film that the badder it got, the better it was. Here we are, less than two years later, and its sequel is already u...

This is the only film coming out this week that I've seen, but that certainly doesn't make it the film of the week. I definitely intend to see Moonrise Kingdom soon after it releases so look out for a review of that, but for now here is yet another rubbish Paranormal Activity film. Also up at Channel 24  What it's about It's been five years since the disappearance of Katie and Hunter and the events of the first Paranormal Activity film, but similarly strange things start happening to another suburban family after they start getting involved in the lives of their neighbours: a single mother and her young son. What we thought The first Paranormal Activity film was a perfectly decent, competently put together haunted house film that was made while the whole “found footage” gimmick was still relatively tolerable and, considering that it cleaned up at the box office, while costing next to nothing to make, it's hardly surprising that it was turned int...

Anyone in the mood for a top notch mainstream romantic comedy? I have just the thing for you. It's funny, I keep on harping on and on about how not only is Emily Blunt hands down one of modern cinema's most likable leading ladies, she has this uncanny ability to seemingly always work with some of modern cinema's most likable leading men. While I'm still waiting for her to work with real life hubby, John Krasinski, we now have her acting alongside the effortlessly, yet atypically, charming Jason Segal in The Five-Year Engagement. Coming from the producing stable of Judd Apatow, directed by Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Nicholas Stoller and co-written by Stoller and Segal, The Five-Year engagement has some serious comedic talent behind it, but it sill manages to distinguish itself from the "Apatow pack". It's definitely too long, especially during the inevitable relationship-disintegration sequence, but, aside for that, it's a pretty damn perfec...

Romantic comedies, they're like buses... Now, admittedly, Ruby Sparks is more of a drama than a comedy and more of a character study than a classic romance, but considering how rare it is to come across a genuinely good movie that can, in some way at least, be classified as a romantic comedy, I'm going to count this as a win for that particularly benighted genre. Based off a high-concept that could easily come out of the early days of Woody Allen's back catalogue, Ruby Sparks tells the story of a lonely writer who starts writing about the girl of his dreams, only to find that she has miraculously leaped off the page and into his lap. The film initially comes off as a light, playful screwball comedy about a guy who literally creates the girl of his dreams before moving into far darker, far more intriguing territory that explores the very idea of a "dream mate" and how what you want may not really be what you need, or for that matter what you want. Based on...

As you may have noticed, I have fallen somewhat behind lately. As such, here are some quick reviews of the films I have not yet had a chance to cover that came out this month. The Flowers of War: I'm strangely ambivalent about this one. On the one hand, you have some good performances, not least of which from Christian Bale, some pretty beautiful war cinematography and a story that is not without its more moving moments. And yet, it's way too long, over-egged in both its emotions and its storytelling and is surprisingly forgettable. And yes, the criticism that this is yet another film all about how a bunch of helpless Easterners get saved by a heroic Westerner is sadly justly earned and the rest of the film isn't good enough to make this central flaw all that easy to overlook. Also worth mentioning is just how unapologetically biased it is. The Japanese in this film are very, very bad, while the Chinese are very, very good. Whether this is a criticism or not, I'...