I’m sure a lot of you will have come across this on Twitch already (thanks for finding it guys), but I had to share it.
Basically to promote The Expendables, the film’s Facebook page has had an awesome 8-Bit retro action game produced for it. All you have to do is ‘like’ the page and you’ll get access. Believe me, if you’re a fan of Contra and Metal Slug etc. it’s worth it!
Play the game here.
Director: Giorgos Lanthimos
Screenplay: Giorgos Lanthimos
Producer: Yorgos Tsoutgiannis
Starring: Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Hristos Passalis, Anna Kalaitzidou
Year: 2009
Country: Greece
BBFC Certification: 18
Duration: 94 min
(4/5)I‘m struggling to find the right words for this review. Dogtooth is the sort of film that’s more of an experience than something with a clear cut narrative or a character based piece. It’s an experience that will absolutely not be for everyone, but it certainly drew me in and held me there.
Director: Christopher Morris
Screenplay: Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Christopher Morris & Simon Blackwell
Producers: Mark Herbert & Derrin Schlesinger
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak, Nigel Lindsay, Arsher Ali, Adeel Akhtar
Year: 2010
Country: UK
BBFC Certification: 15
Duration: 101 min
(4/5)Four Lions is the feature length debut of British writer/director Chris Morris. For those of you who aren’t familiar with his work, Chris Morris is the man behind a handful of surreal cult comedy series such as Brass Eye, The Day Today and Jam. Anyone who hasn’t heard of any of these should get them bought or rented as soon as possible, they’re twisted satire of the highest order (Jam is a bit harder to stomach, but it still has moments of genius). It’ll come to no surprise to fans that Morris has turned to the taboo subject of terrorism for his first film (this is the man that brought us the ‘Paedophilia Special’ episode of Brass Eye) and he doesn’t disappoint.
A quick announcement for any fellow Brits out there. Fernando Meirelles, the man behind films such as City of God, The Constant Gardener and Row Three favourite (not one of mine though I must say) Blindness is coming to London tonight as part of Festival Brazil, a celebration of the country’s cultural heritage. I’m not going to be able to make it down there, but if any of our readers can make it I’d love to hear what you thought of it.
Festival Brazil’s In Conversation With Fernando Meirelles will take place on 29 June at 6.45pm at Canning House, London SW1
I found myself drawn to a few lists (I’m a total sucker for them) in two British mainstream film magazines recently, thought they’d make good discussion starters.
The 60 Best Looking Films Ever: The order is messed up and they only seem to pick one film per director, but it’s got a fair few of my favourites in there. Nice idea though, anyone want to throw in their thoughts on what they’ve missed off? I think Andrei Rublev should have been in there, or at least something from Tarkovsky (I’ve only seen that to be honest, but I imagine his other work also looks stunning).
The 100 Best Films of World Cinema: A pretty tall order knocking up a list like this, but I was surprised to see one or two titles in there that I haven’t heard of (mainly African ones, I have very little knowledge of films from that continent). The order is a joke though, Infernal Affairs for example is stupidly high (it shouldn’t even be there in my opinion) and a lot of the films listed are obvious crossover success titles, but again it’d be interesting to hear people’s thoughts.
10 Coolest Movie Premakes: This one’s just a bit of fun really, a bunch of trailers for modern films rehashed from clips of old films.
With the marketplace screenings all but ended I dedicated the last three days of the festival to catching as many of the Un Certain Regard and In Competition films as possible. Unfortunately I missed the Palme d’Or winner, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives as well as most of the other award winners, but there were still some interesting and excellent titles to catch.
After a disastrous start to my festival experience (I missed my flight through shear stupidity and the airport’s lack of loudspeaker communication) I’ve finally made it to the South of France at arguably the world’s most famous film event, the Cannes Film Festival and I’ve taken in a handful of films in the two days I’ve been here. No standouts yet, but fingers crossed there will be some gems in there that I manage to catch. I don’t get internet access at my accommodation and my laptop’s too much of a monster to carry everywhere so my coverage won’t come thick and fast, but I’m going to post my thoughts on everything I see and maybe run a couple of full reviews next week when I’m settled back home.
Director: Benny Chan
Screenplay: Jackie Chan, Benny Chan & Alan Yuen
Producers: Benny Chan, Jackie Chan, Willie Chan, Solon So & Zhonglei Wang
Starring: Jackie Chan, Michael Hui, Louis Koo, Charlene Choi, Biao Yuen
Year: 2006
Country: Hong Kong
BBFC Certification: 15
Duration: 134 min
(3/5)I wanted to squeeze this review in before I went to Cannes (off tomorrow, can’t wait!) as it’s released next week here in the UK. Robin-B-Hood is marketed as Jackie Chan’s true return to the Hong Kong action comedies he became famous for in the 80′s and 90′s, and for the most part it delivers this, but it’s no Project A or Police Story.
The film tells the story of three down-on-their-luck thieves (Jackie Chan, Michael Hui & Louis Koo) who take on a well paid job that ends up with them having to take care of a kidnapped baby. Meanwhile the police are on their tail (headed by Jackie’s old friend the great Yuen Biao) as are some bailiffs after Jackie’s debts and the gangsters who are trying to get their hands on the baby to prove it’s heritage as grandson to their boss. Alongside this the characters all have their various relationship problems which are eventually solved through looking after the baby.
My friends and I recently got together for another one of our regular ‘trashathons’ – you may remember I covered the last extravaganza in one of my first posts here at Row Three. Basically consisting of watching as many cheap and cheesy genre titles we can handle in a weekend, our get-togethers have become a quarterly staple that I always look forward to. We’ve watched some really bad films, but we’ve also dug out some real gems in the past, many of which have disappeared completely with the DVD boom. Yes, I’m talking VHS here. Throwing picture quality out the window we’ve been scouring the bins for some long forgotten titles. This time round we didn’t manage to squeeze in quite as many films (we spent hours at a car boot sale purchasing more!) and a few aren’t obscure by any means (only two titles were on VHS this time), but I still enjoyed myself and thought you guys might like to hear what we got up to. Again I’ve dug out some trailers and clips for your amusement.
P.S. Ratings are probably not worth it for most of these titles, but I’m going to give some scores for shear entertainment value, so don’t take them too seriously.
Director: Florian Gallenberger
Screenplay: Florian Gallenberger
Producers: Benjamin Herrmann, Mischa Hofmann & Jan Mojto
Starring: Ulrich Tukur, Daniel Brühl, Steve Buscemi, Anne Consigny, Dagmar Manzel
Year: 2009
Country: France, China, Germany
BBFC Certification: 15
Duration: 129 min
(3/5)City of War: The Story of John Rabe is a French, Chinese and German co-production that tells the story of the ‘Rape of Nanking’ between 1937-38 and how German businessman John Rabe helped save hundreds of thousands of Nanking residents from the fate that befell hundreds of thousands of others. It’s a shameful period in Japanese history that some still deny ever happened, despite all the evidence and eventual acknowledgement by the government several decades later. City of War is essentially a Chinese version of Schindler’s List, but nonetheless presents a story well worth telling and does a fairly decent job even if it lacks some of the cinematic poetry of Spielberg’s much loved film. Out this month in the UK is City of Life and Death too that tackles the same subject matter though. From the reviews I’ve seen of that it sounds like a more harrowing experience focusing on the atrocities themselves and not on John Rabe and those trying to put a stop to them. Without seeing it I can’t recommend one over the other, but my instincts tell me that City of Life and Death will be the more powerful film. I’ll certainly try and track it down to compare the two.
Directors: Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant
Screenplay: Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant
Producers: Sue Baden-Powell, Charlie Hanson, Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant
Starring: Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes, Jack Doolan, Felicity Jones, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson
Year: 2010
Country: UK
BBFC Certification: 15
Duration: 95 min
(2/5)I‘ll get this out of the way straight from the bat, because you can all see the low rating already. I know there are quite a few Ricky Gervais haters out there and his brand of humour isn’t to everyone’s tastes, so before you put me in that category I must say that generally I am a Ricky Gervais fan (when he’s teamed up with Stephen Merchant at least). I love The Office (the British original, I’ve not seen the US version) and what I’ve seen of Extras is great too. I didn’t however like Cemetery Junction very much at all.
The lauded pair’s directorial debut (together) is set in a small British town called Cemetery Junction in the 1970′s. A group of friends reaching turning points in their lives long to leave their pitiful surroundings and make a name for themselves elsewhere in the world. The film largely centres around Freddie Taylor (played by Christian Cooke), who has made the first steps to bucking the trend of factory employment and underachievement prevalent in Cemetery Junction by starting work selling life insurance for the rich ex-Junctioner Mr Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes). He starts to doubt this move though as he meets Kendrick’s soon-to-be-wed daughter Julie (Felicity Jones), an old friend from school who dreams of travelling the globe, yet is set to become a downtrodden housewife.
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Screenplay: Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn
Based on the Comic Book Series by: Mark Millar
Producers: Adam Bohling, Tarquin Pack, Brad Pitt, David Reid, Kris Thykier & Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong
Year: 2010
Country: USA & UK
BBFC Certification: 15
Duration: 117 min
(4/5)Riding a crimson wave of controversy and hype Kick-Ass finally reached our shores this week and the question on everyone’s lips is does it deliver what the trailers and title promises? Well I can safely say yes. I really enjoyed this film a lot, but it’s not without it’s flaws, which I’ll go into shortly. Meanwhile I’m going to try my absolute hardest not to crack the obvious pun.
For the three people that don’t know what this film is about, Kick-Ass is the story of a teenage loser, Dave Lizewski, who is fed up of the fact that there are so many real bad guys in the world yet no real superheroes, so he crafts a costume out of a mail order wet-suit, buys a couple of truncheons and heads out to help those in need as his alter-ego Kick-Ass. His first attempts don’t go particularly well, but after an onlooker captures him successfully laying out some vigilante justice, the footage gets put online and Kick-Ass becomes an internet and subsequently full on media sensation. This of course pumps Dave up to follow his dream, but he soon realises that there are much more effective superheroes and much more dangerous bad guys out there as he gets embroiled with the war raging between the deadly father and daughter team Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, and mob kingpin Frank D’Amico.
