Author Archives: Sarah

Reader, writer, cinephile. That about covers it, yeah?

Haywire: Not awful. Gina Carano: Also not bad

I’m tellingly unenthusiastic about Haywire, Steven Soderbergh’s latest, “Hey that chick is cool, I want to make a movie for her” project (last time it was The Girlfriend Experience with porn star Sasha Grey, which is easily one of the top 10 worst movies I’ve ever seen). Crafted for female MMA star Gina Carano, Haywire is appealingly slick and appropriately paced—it runs at a swift 90 minutes—but it left me a bit hollow, probably because it had no plot.

First and foremost, this movie was meant to introduce us to Gina Carano: Action Heroine. For the most part, this worked. I accept Carano as an action star. She’s watchable and she definitely sells the physical stuff. I am not saying this as a knock on her weight or anything—Carano is NOT fat—but it’s nice to see a woman on screen that actually looks like she could kick a man and it would hurt. She’s substantial. There are muscles. And, what interested me most—she used a lot of leverage in her fight scenes. In most movies with female action characters, the chick fights just like a man. Throws a punch like a man, moves like a man, reacts like a man. But let’s be honest—women don’t fight like men. We move differently. We have a different range of motion. Carano’s fight scenes repeatedly show her using leverage to increase her force and propulsion so she can take down men bigger than her. She isn’t doing fancy parkour tricks because it looks cool, but because bouncing off that wall is going to boost her momentum so she can knock that guy down. It was visually and characteristically pleasing.Continue reading “Haywire: Not awful. Gina Carano: Also not bad”

Top 10 films of 2011

50/50

I can’t remember the last time I laughed and cried so hard in a movie as I did in 50/50. Based on the real-life story of screenwriter Will Reiser, 50/50 follows Adam after he’s diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at 27. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives one of his best performances as Adam and he’s ably supported by Anna Kendrick, Anjelica Huston and a surprisingly tolerable Seth Rogen. 50/50 barely touches on the physical reality of cancer—we only briefly see the effects of chemo—but the emotional reality is sharply drawn, in turns painfully raw and touchingly hopeful. There was no more life-affirming movie in 2011.Continue reading “Top 10 films of 2011”

Movie Review Mashup: Horses, TinTins and Tattoos

The Adventures of TinTin

Here’s my problem with TinTin: It didn’t need to be animated. Motion capture is not only as freaky as hell to look at, it’s terribly expensive. For the $130 million budget, co-directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson could have made a terrific live action movie that wouldn’t have given me the willies any time I looked into a character’s eyes. Although to be fair, some characters worked better in mocap than others. For instance, Thomson & Thompson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), had distinctly cartoony designs with little beady cartoon eyes. Not that creepy. TinTin (Jamie Bell), however, made me want to beat him to death with a pitchfork every time I saw his weird, gummy face. Note for all filmmakers: If you’re going to do motion capture, don’t go for a human look. Think cartoony.Continue reading “Movie Review Mashup: Horses, TinTins and Tattoos”

Shame is the most unsexy movie about sex you’ll ever see

If you’re going into Steve McQueen’s (Hunger) Shame expecting lots of sexy scenes with Michael Fassbender having sex, you’re in for a disappointment. Yes, there’s a lot of naked Fass Ass and yes, there’s a lot of sex, but no, it’s no sexy. It’s not fun. It’s not even pretty movie sex. At one point, Brandon (Fassbender) is crying during a threesome and not tears of, “Oh man, my dreams are coming true,” but tears of, “I hate myself and I don’t want to be doing this anymore”. Fassbender absolutely makes Shame, much as he did his first collaboration with McQueen, Hunger, and he gives a performance that sets the high watermark for his career very, very high. This is the male lead performance of the year, just barely edging past Peter Mullan in Tyrannosaur for the most powerfully affecting performance from a leading actor. All the good and great bits of Shame are down to Fassbender. Take him away and the movie doesn’t actually have a lot going on.Continue reading “Shame is the most unsexy movie about sex you’ll ever see”

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an impeccable rendering of the past

Last week I attended a screening of a movie I’ve been dying to see for ages, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Hype for this film—largely of the Oscar kind—has been building steadily for a while and it is well deserved. From top to toe this is one of the best crafted, best acted, most tautly presented thrillers I’ve seen in a really long time. The story might not be your cup of tea, but you can’t complain about the technical and artistic merit of the film. This is a flawless movie, flawlessly made. Tinker Tailor is based on John Le Carre’s novel, considered to be his most autobiographical, and is a seminal Cold War-era spy story. Bond and Bourne were also born during the Cold War, but where those characters have been reinvented and reinterpreted for modern audiences, George Smiley, Tinker Tailor’s protagonist, remains firmly planted in his 1970’s roots.Continue reading “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an impeccable rendering of the past”