Tag: movies

Jumper

Untraceable

Vantage Point

Uneven thriller that is largely intelligent and well written but is let down by being afflicted with massive illogical plot holes.

It is surprisingly well written in regard to creating the triangle of betrayal between cop Enrique, terrorist Veronica and Javier the assassin. But a double for the president who is willing to stand in to get shot! That the Secret Service would use that as a means of keeping the president safe when they have just received confirmation that it’s a real threat is not credible.

Interestingly for a Hollywood film made post 9/11 it shows the terrorists to be very competent and the secret service to be incompetent other than the near superheroic Dennis Quaid as Thomas Burke.

In the end the plot is foiled more by luck than anything.

I’m Not There

I’m Not There is a brilliant, but flawed beautifully strange movie. As I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the life and work of Bob Dylan I cannot say whether it is an effective study of the man, I would suspect that if you were looking for that then Don’t Look Back or No Direction Home would suit your needs better.

All the six actors playing the part of ‘Dylan’ are wonderful although through no fault of his Heath Ledger’s Robbie Clark seems the least Dylan-like. Of the supporting actors I think Bruce Greenwood deserves a lot of praise for his dual roles of Keenan Jones and Pat Garrett. It’s packed to the gills with references to or homages of other movies and references to the life and work of Bob Dylan himself of course although I think I probably missed far more of the latter. With the Richard Gere segment being heavily influenced by Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid it is appropriate that Kris Kristofferson be the narrator for the story.

My two main criticisms of the film are that there is almost no narrative flow between each of the segments, the film mostly just seems to cut between them at random and it seems unnecessarily long I don’t believe the film would suffer from having many of the scenes cut entirely.

Shoot ‘Em Up

A strange movie this one as it seems like a bit of a cross between two of Clive Owen’s previous movies Sin City and Children of Men with a bit of Looney Tunes thrown in for good measure.

Mr. Smith (Owen) finds himself the reluctant guardian of a newborn when he rescues a heavily pregnant woman from a killer. Upon despatching the hitman with a carrot Smith discovers that the guy he killed wasn’t alone and a whole host of armed men are apparently in pursuit of the pregnant woman. Paul Giamatti as the leader of the gang of killers plays Elmer Fudd to Clive Owen’s Bugs Bunny, is he like Fudd “a pussy who uses a gun to make him look tough”? Well next to Owen’s unstoppable killing machine the answer has to be yes.

Shoot ‘Em Up is also peculiar in that it is an anti-gun movie that is extremely violent with dozens of people as the title suggests being shot to death if they are not being killed by the occasional carrot when Smith finds himself out of ammunition. Enjoyable but not wholly satisfying.

Enchanted

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

I’m practically at a loss for words. Beautiful bleak melancholic portrait of an amiable sociopath and the man who killed him.

Wonderful score, beautiful cinematography with fantastic portrayals of the characters by the two leads make this my film of the year.