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  • 28 Apr

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    Review: The Avengers

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    The Avengers poster

    Director: Joss Whedon
    Screenplay: Joss Whedon
    Producers: Kevin Feige, Avi Arad, Jon Favreau
    Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Cobie Smulders, Samuel L. Jackson.
    MPAA Rating: PG-13
    Running time: 142 min.

    (4.5/5)

    Marvel has been very clever with the way they’ve been building up to The Avengers. Instead of rushing into things and doing the big movie right away they, with the exception the two lesser known members, dedicated a movie to each of the heroes (or two movies in the case of a certain billionaire hero), exploring their respective back stories thoroughly and giving them purpose and, most importantly, giving us purpose to invest ourselves in them.

    So after five movies and more fanboy hype than just about any movie to be released this year short of The Dark Knight Rises, does The Avengers live up to the hype? Absolutely.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 02 Apr

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    David Lynch’s Crazy Clown Time Video is as Weird as You’d Expect

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    Anyone who knows anything about the world of David Lynch – his movies, paintings and music – will find it absolutely no surprise that the video for the titular track from his first solo album Crazy Clown Time is strange. Basically consisting of people acting out exactly what’s in the lyrics – including pouring beer, a woman taking her top off and a man setting his mohawk on fire. Yeah, it’s as strange (and awesome!) as it sounds.

    An exercise of being straightforward with your music? Or just weird for weird’s sake?

    I’ve been a big fan of David Lynch for a number of years now (he might be my favourite director at this point in time) and while, admittedly, that fandom might have clouded my judgement of his musical talents, I still found Crazy Clown Time an oddly addictive album. The title track isn’t anywhere near my favourite from the album (that would be Good Day Today) but it’s hypnotic in a very Mulholland Drive/Inland Empire-esque way.

    Dive down the Rabbit hole by watching the video below:

  • 07 Feb

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    Finite Focus: Ben Affleck Gets His Comeuppance (Dazed and Confused)

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    I only saw Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused for the very first time about a year ago and it became an instant favorite. It’s one of those flicks that I find insanely rewatchable because of the distinct characters, quotable dialogue, terrific soundtrack and a general sort of laid back, “it’ll be all right on the night” attitude. And it has a host of actors before they were really known names, from Milla Jovovich and Matthew McConaughey to Rory Cochrane and Nicky Katt (to name but a few).

    Also in the mix is one Ben Affleck, playing bully Fred O’Bannion who makes it his mission to smack in the ass with a paddle all those juniors who escaped his clutches during the last day of school (I’m sure that school “tradition” makes much more sense to those in the US!). There are so many great scenes I could have chosen to highlight but ultimately I decided on the one in which O’Bannion gets what he deserves. I hate the kind of person that Affleck plays in the movie (being mean and nasty for no good reason) and I get so much satisfaction seeing him get his comeuppance like this every time I watch it.

  • 12 Jan

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    Trailer: Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom

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    We’re big fans of idiosyncratic filmmaker Wes Anderson around here with the likes of The Royal Tenenbaums, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou loved by many of the Row Three team (although I personally don’t care for Zissou all that much). Any new film by him is quite an event and his latest Moonrise Kingdom is no exception, the trailer for which has just hit the web over at Apple.

    IMDB describes the plot as:

    Set on an island off the coast of New England in the 1960s, as a young boy and girl fall in love they are moved to run away together. Various factions of the town mobilize to search for them and the town is turned upside down — which might not be such a bad thing.

    The cast is to die for with the likes of Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel and Tilda Swinton inhabiting this particular example of the director’s unique world. The trailer is vintage Wes Anderson but as far as I’m concerned that’s a great thing. Watch it below.

    Moonrise Kingdom is scheduled for a limited U.S. release on May 25th.

  • 02 Jan

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    Top 10 Biggest Disappointments of 2011

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    We’ve come to the end of what has, in my eyes anyway, been a pretty damn great year for film. Row Three’s annual best of lists post is still to come but since no cinematic year is ever perfect I thought I’d post what are my personal biggest movie disappointments of 2011. These are not necessarily the worst of or even bad films, heck they might even be pretty good in their own right. But these are the ones which personally didn’t live up to the high expectations I had for me them.

    So here goes, my biggest big-screen let-downs of the past 12 months:

    10. In Time

    Just making my list at number 10 is Andrew Niccol’s wasted opportunity In Time, a film with a terrific concept – a world where time is literally money, with people working for and buying things with increments of time (2 minutes for coffee, 30 minutes to ride the bus to work etc.) – that is frittered away to concentrate on running around and building a “relationship” between two leads, Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, who don’t have the sufficient chemistry together to make it convincing. Still fluffy fun but in no way delivers on its amazing premise.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 07 Dec

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    Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

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    Directors: Tomas Alfredson
    Screenplay: Bridget O’Connor, Peter Straughan, John le Carre (novel)
    Starring: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Dencick, Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham.
    Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Robyn Slovo, Alexandra Ferguson.
    Country: UK/France/Germany
    Running Time: 127 min
    Year: 2011
    MPAA Rating: R

    (5/5)

    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy comes with a lot of impressive credentials: it’s based on a best-selling novel by John le Carré, it’s helmed by the director of a successful Swedish vampire movie, a previous mini-series adaptation of the book is fondly remembered (at least by people of a certain generation) and it has one of the best British casts in recent memory. The possibility of utter disappointment looms over it like a cloud. But it thankfully proves that a film with such hype behind it going in can completely deliver.

    Set during the Cold War, Gary Oldman plays ex-MI6 agent George Smiley who is brought out of retirement to help uncover a mole planted by the Russians years ago.

    It’s perhaps understandable the trailers sold the film as a lot more of an all-out thriller than it actually is. The trouble, though, is it might draw in audiences who are expecting something faster paced when in reality this is much slower than you might expect. However, it’s never once dull or boring, taking its time to build a quiet suspense and anticipation which gives it a palpable energy, a fascinating heartbeat.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 17 Nov

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    Review: The Rum Diary

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    Director: Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I, Jennifer 8)
    Producers: Johnny Depp, Christi Dembrowski, Graham King
    Starring: Johnny Depp, Michael Rispoli, Aaron Echkhart, Amber Heard, Giovanni Ribisi, Richard Jenkins.
    MPAA Rating: R
    Running time: 120 min.

    (3/5)

    The work of the late Hunter S. Thompson has been brought to the big-screen a couple of times now with Where the Buffalo Roam and more famously Terry Gilliam’s appropriately bizarre Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Now to add to the pile we have The Rum Diary, from writer/director Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I), a decisively less memorable and infinitely safer film than one would hope for based on the work of such a fantastically unique author.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 11 Nov

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    Shorts Program: Connecting

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    This is a slightly older short film but it just popped into my head again recently and I wanted to highlight for anyone who may not have seen it (which I presume is most of you). Made in 2005 by Dan Turner (who also made a couple of other shorts called 4:37 and Second Guest), Connecting won Best Film at Total Film Magazine’s Short Movie Awards and came runner-up as the “Best Film From the North” at the Kino Film Festival.

    It’s one of those shorts you’re best knowing as little about before watching but to clue you in just a tad it features a man on a bus who is annoyed by all the phone-related sounds he is hearing around him and eventually gets extra annoyed (nae angry) when he hears a cell phone continue to ring without anyone answering it and stopping the noise.

    I’ll say no more than that, watch the short below:

  • 07 Nov

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    Review: Straw Dogs (2011)

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    Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy DVD Cover

    Director: Rod Lurie (The Contender, The Last Castle, Resurrecting the Champ )
    Producers: Rod Lurie, Marc Frydman
    Starring: James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgård, James Woods, Dominic Purcell, Rhys Cairo, Drew Powell, Billy Lush, Laz Alonso, Walton Goggins
    MPAA Rating: R
    Running time: 110 min

    (2/5)

    Sam Peckinpah’s original Straw Dogs caused massive controversy in the UK when it came out in 1971. Alongside Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Peckinpah’s tale of survival and man’s inner animal didn’t sit well with the British Board of Film Classification, leading to cuts (particularly to the notorious rape scene) and even banning in the mid 1980s. It’s now a classic that remains controversial and a genuinely tough watch to this day.

    Jump forward 40 years and we have writer/director Rod Lurie’s redundant, pointless, and almost entirely ineffective remake that takes the interesting jagged edges of the original and smoothes them out to make a predictably polished Hollywood version.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 03 Nov

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    Review: In Time

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    Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy DVD Cover

    Director: Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, S1m0ne, Lord of War)
    Producers: Andrew Niccol, Marc Abraham, Eric Newman, Debra James
    Starring: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Vincent Kartheiser, Alex Pettyfer, Olivia Wilde, Johnny Galecki.
    MPAA Rating: PG-13
    Running time: 109 min.

    (3/5)

    In Time is one of those movies where the premise is a lot cooler and more interesting than the execution. The idea of a world where time is the currency, where people only live to 25 years old and thereafter work for and spend time (with the government controlling the supply of time to the population) is fascinating. A real hook if ever there was one.

    However, that idea only carries the film so far and by about half way through you can feel that it’s running of steam. It doesn’t really know where to take the idea past a certain point and feels underwritten and almost unfinished in a way.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 31 Oct

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    Top 5 Scary Moments In Non-Horror Movies

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    Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… This is a list that’s probably been done a lot by others in the past but since it’s Halloween time and all I thought I’d throw up my own list.

    These are the moments that prove that a movie doesn’t have to be part of the horror genre to a give you a good scare, whether that be completely intentional or not. Of course this isn’t in any way definitive but just what moments I personally found scary/creepy/unsettling in movies that aren’t classified as horror. Enjoy:

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 26 Oct

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    Finite Focus: Machine Gun Fantasy (I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK)

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    After making a few of the most powerful films of the last decade with “The Vengeance Trilogy” (consisting of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) Korean director Park Chan-wook made this quirky gem entitled I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK (which may be one of my favorite movie titles ever). Taking place in a mental institution filled with all sorts of eclectic patients, it follows a young woman who thinks she is a cyborg.

    Some might say this goes too far over the line into silly and eccentric, with all sorts of kookiness thrown in just for the sake of it. And while there are parts of it that makes me, a big fan of strange cinema, raise my eyebrows I nonetheless get swept up in the fantasy.

    No more is that fantasy put display than in the scene I have chosen to highlight here in which the main character gets up from her wheelchair, walks casually to the middle of all the adjoining hospital corridors, holds up her arms in front of her and proceeds to tear up the place with machine gun bullets she is imagining are coming out of her fingertips. It’s a wonderfully over-the-top and quite brilliantly put together sequence that shows off Park’s visual flair as much as any other scene he’s ever done.

    If you’ve never seen this film before please do, and watching the scene now will definitely give you great insight into what you can expect:

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