Category Archives: Reviews

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”

The Descendants ruminates on guilt, grief and forgiveness in paradise

Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election) ends his seven-year absence from feature filmmaking with an adaptation of Kaui Hart Hemmings’ The Descendants, a dramedy that’s more drama than comedy. If you’re familiar with Payne’s work—and you should, at the very least, be familiar with Election—you know that the line between crying and laughing is where his movies live. Payne’s movies usually have some really funny bits but end up being kind of depressing in the end. The Descendants walks the same line and uses humor to leaven the heavy moments, but I found it to be more optimistic and hopeful than Payne usually is. Perhaps his worldview shifted sometime during his sabbatical.Continue reading “The Descendants ruminates on guilt, grief and forgiveness in paradise”

Let’s pretend like Tarsem Singh didn’t make Immortals

Because it’s kind of depressing that he did. Tarsem (I’m not being cheeky and over familiar, he’s referred to as “Tarsem”, not “Singh”) has directed two movies prior to Immortals—The Cell in 2000 and The Fall in 2006. The Fall is one of the most gloriously weird movies I’ve ever seen and I took an interest in Tarsem from that point on. I’m not one of his insane fanboys (who propelled the appalling Immortals to a $32 million opening weekend), but as a photographer his work appeals to me. His bright colors and surrealist imagery creates an incomparable palette for him to work from. However, Tarsem has never been what I would call a storyteller. He’s a visuals man, cobbling together stories from fantastical visions.Continue reading “Let’s pretend like Tarsem Singh didn’t make Immortals”