Over The Hedge

The best of a poor mix available at the cinema this weekend (well, after I eliminated everything I'd already seen).

I was actually pleasantly surprised. It was genuinely funny at times and kept my attention. Not too many jokes for the adults, but I still guffawaed through it.

Some odd voice casting though. Bruce Willis as the racoon I could understand, but William Shatner as the possum? And Avril Lavagne as his daughter?!?

Basic plot is given away in the trailer. A bunch of animals wake up from hibernation to find half their forest has been developed into suberbia. As usual, there's a subplot I won't go into, but the scene with the dog and the gas tank is comedy genius. And the hyper-active squirrel is hillarious.

There's possibly a message about wasteful humans and their eating habits in there, but it's unlikely the kids will pick up on this.

Only spoilt slightly by hearing that Bruce Willis was a bit of a jerk on the Radio 1 show interviewing him about it this morning. Still, it was 3am, so maybe he was entitled.

OQs:

"CORK?!?"

"Muhahaha!- Did I say that out loud?"

The Untouchables

What is it with this film that makes me want to watch it every time it's on TV?

Kevin Costner is superb as Ness. Sean Connery plays it straight for once, and forgoes the hair-piece¹. Andy Garcia is the crack shot rookie cop. But De Niro just steals the show as Capone. The scene with the baseball bat still makes me shudder, because he wasn't really punishing his lackie, he was making a point about the power he had.

This film is stylish with a capital ST.

There's plenty of fantastic camera work onshow here. I'm still trying to work out how they did the shot of the burglar entering Connery's pad. It's got to be a steady cam, but how did it fit? Steady cams are fairly big things. It hasn't dated much at all. OK, there are the odd shots where you can tell it's rear projection, etc. But on the whole, it's still a superbly good looking film. If it was a woman, it's be....well, it's be well out of my league so let's not go there....

It's hard to realise this comes from the same director (Brian De Palma) who gave us Scarface (hurrah), Carrie (woohoo) and Mission to Mars (er....).

Apparently there's a sequel in the offing.

Score: B+

OQ: There are too many: I can't do the quote here, but it's Andy Garcia swearing at Malone when they first meet, and Connery replies "Oh, I like him" The other is just before this, with the stuttering officer:

"To prto..to pro...to protect and s-serve."
"Alright, on you go. There goes the next chief of police."

"He's in the car..."

"1634 Racine. You know I used to have a friend who lived there..."

¹There's a rumour that his wig for The Hunt for Red October cost $20,000.^2
2No really, I'm not making that up.

The Da Vinci Code

Dang! Beaten to the punch by Parsons at work. Again!

Must strive to make my review different. I know! Change the font....

Right. The Da Vinci code.

Ignore what the film critics tell you about this film. They're wrong. Which means, ignore me, because I (like everyone here) am a critic, albeit for a small audience. Which means don't ignore me......

It's a strange name, given Da Vinci (and his work) feature only briefly at best. I hadn't read the book, and don't really intend to, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This film is a lot darker than I was expecting, and I mean that in the literal sense. The film has less light in scenes that the trailers would have you believe. Tom Hanks' hair is nowhere near as distracting or annoying as I thought it would be. Maybe I was distracted by the lovely Audrey Tautou. Rowr....

The film starts with a murder and ends....well, I wouldn't want to spoil it for you. It does get a little sledge-hammery towards the end, but this is forgivable given the heavy (and rather wordy, by all accounts) nature of the source material.

The film is lovingly shot, which you'd expect from a Ron Howard movie. It also steals it's soundtrack from a previous movie. Again, something you'd expect from a Ron Howard movie. The soundtrack was a little too similar to National Treasure for my liking, and since they both feature references to the Knights Templar (and use quite similar flashbacks to their demise), I found I focused on this. That's just how my mind works though.

I think this movie suffers heavily from HarryPotter-ism. People who've read the book enjoy the film a lot less than those who haven't. I liked it.

Really?, you ask. Well, put it this way. I'm seriously tempted to go and see it again, and as you all know, I only do that with Star Trek movies, and the now infamous "Night Of Three Times" when I saw Galaxy Quest three times on the same day.

You'll enjoy it, as long as you accept it for what it is: a ripping yarn. It's not historical drama, it's a thriller. It's just, like all good thrillers, it's based on what could have happened.

I've also come to the conclusion that film critics don't know what the hell they're talking about. Which bodes badly for me, I guess....

OQ: '...s'il vous plait...'

Score: B+ It's a darn good movie, and I'll own it on DVD when it's available.

Trivia: As a piece of trivia, Paul Bettany was interviewed on Jonathan Ross and was how he felt working with Tom Hanks for the first time. "Well, the first day it was very nervous. I mean, he's never been in a Paul Bettany movie before..."

There is a small prize of 500 kudos for the first person to tell me how many words I've invented for the purpose of this review.

Mission Impossible 3

Bleugh!

That was pretty much my feeling for the film once I'd left. There's so much wrong with this movie, it's difficult to know where to start. But let's start with what's good with it.

It's better than MI2. This isn't really hard, as MI2 was the biggest pile of pants it's ever been my misfortune to sit through. It's better then MI1 as well, and as an action movie, it delivers. It's packed with action, stunts, breaking into places that are supposed to be impossible to break into. The usual stuff. It's very good on that, and if you can forgive it the plotholes and aren't a huge fan of the TV series, then I dare say you'll enjoy it.

The bad stuff: There's nothing new. Every piece looks tired and has a definite "seen it before" feel. Even the most action packed and exciting part, the ambush on the Florida Keyes bridges just smacks of the sequence from True Lies. There's just nothing original. And I feel cheated that we don't see how he steals the canister from the building.

The explosive charge in the head. Was it just me, or were other people expecting, I dunno....an explosion maybe? Zzzzapp and a head jerk?!? What a rip!

And the plotholes do annoy. Like breaking into the Vatican City. Where was the laser perimeter? The ultra-sonic detectors? The guard dogs? Hell, where were the ID badges? And looping the video! Talk about your cliché!

And the biggest plot point: the traitor in IMF. Every Mission Impossible film has had one of them. It's been the key turning point in all three movies. I just left thinking that IMF doesn't screen it's own agents before employing them.

I really wanted to like this film, given what people have said about it, I really did. And don't get me wrong, it is the best of the Mission Impossible films. But I'm a fan of the original TV series, and while I appreciate you can't translate it directly to the big screen (it would be unrealistic for Tom Cruise not to fire a single shot during the movie), I just don't feel it captured the feel of the show. The "big reveal" is missing, the use of the face masks has become a parody of itself and cutting between the characters while they work on a mission and having them say "30 seconds to bravo two" is NOT the same thing as seeing that chap who was always stuck in an air-duct, sitting in an air-duct fiddling with electronics and having to wait 15 minutes into the episode to know what the hell he's doing and why.

It's kind of like the difference between Murder, She Wrote and Columbo, I guess. Both from the same genre (same creators, actually) but they take radically different ways to tell similar stories.

Also, on a related topic: I have come to the conclusion that 12A certificates should be withdrawn and the 12 put back. There was a 7 and 4 year old watching this movie with their grannies, and anyone who's seen it will know why that's a worrying thing.

Score: C-

OQ: I honestly can't remember any.

Solaris

Erm...help?!?

Is this film really really good, and I was too asleep to appreciate this, or was it really as bad as my gut feeling told me?

Clooney arrives on the ship with two clearly disturbed crew members. Instead of doing what I would do - Tazer their asses, turn the AI back on and head for home, he talks to them. For hours.

"They're not human, and I'm threatened by that." Then why are you a deep space explorer, love? Surely you're going to encounter non-humans eventually. Excellent first contact procedure though. Bombard them with Higgs particles to destroy them, simultaneously using up your ship's fuel so you can't go home. Brilliant!

It's like all the weird, spooky bits from 2001. Except they kept this going for the entire movie. I think there was about five lines of dialogue in the entire film, it's mostly just mood pieces. You can see the references, like when Clooney is approaching the ship, in his spacesuit, the lights from the control panel are reflected in his visor. A clear 2001 reference. Also the feeling of isolation and desolation permeate through the film, but this meant I couldn't relate to the characters or feel anything for them.

Ultimately this left me disappointed. Whereas 2001 was just as enigmatic, at least there was a sort of answer at the end of the movie, and subsequent movies/books explained what the Sam Hill was going on. This just felt confusing, but not in a clunky way. The film is very beautifully made, excellent camera work and mood pieces. It just leaves you confused at the ending(s).

Also, thinking back, the whole "you won't understand until it happens to you" think annoyed me. How hard is it to say "memories come to life" or "my child is here" or "I see dead people"???

There are other faults. The female doctor (name escapes me) if first shown being very paranoid about him coming into her room, and agrophobic. Yet ten minutes later she's happily sitting in the conference room, chatting away.

OQ: I didn't think it was possible, but this both sucks and blows at the same time. And not in a good 'Jenna Jameson' kind of way.

Score: D

2010

Often, and unfairly, described¹ as a weak sequel to 2001, this was showing last night on the Sci-Fi Channel. This is still one of my favourite movies.

Whereas 2001 was bleak and drab in various shades of grey (a deliberate move to make the final psychedelic "stargate" effect far more impacting), this film brought colour to the "new" space race.

The US-Soviet tensions do seem a little dated now, but at the same time, lay some strong foundations for the plot.

Plot: Discovery, left in parking orbit around Io by Dave Bowman before he disappeared, is going to crash on Io before the Americans can get a recovery mission to her. They've somehow managed to miss this over the last nine years. The Russians are going to get there before it crashes, but they lack the expertise to salvage her in time. Low and behold, there's suddenly three free seats on the Russian mission.

To explain, I read this story first, before I saw it. As such, the film is fairly faithful, only the absence of the Chinese mission being obvious. 2010 was first written by Arthur C Clarke and then filmed, whereas 2001 was first filmed and the book (written about the same time), was released later. It tries to explain some of what happened in 2001. Although not everything is revealed, one of the plot points in why HAL malfunctioned and killed off the crew. It's actually a very clever reason, same one as in the book, and doesn't pander to the audience. You'll either understand it, or you won't.

This film can still send shivers up my spine, particularly the scene where Dave Bowman turns up and when the Monolith disappears. The special effects have stood the test of time fairly well. They still look pretty damn good, and can put a lot of CGI from more modern films to shame. Even the ignition of Jupiter is impressive. The images, taken mostly from the Voyager craft, are breathtaking (even if we now know the colour of the clouds is way off.)

This is definitely a film that stands up to repeat viewing. You catch new and different things each time you watch it. It also pays to have a good sound system, as a mono TV sounds completely different to a 5.1 surround sound. The mono tends to mash the soundtrack together, so for example, in the escape scene, the music and the noise of the approaching shock wave are smushed in to each other. But the 5.1 can pick them out for you.

Score: A- for sci-fi fans. Probably a B- or C+ for non-fans.

OQ: I understand. It is important that you believe me. Look behind you.

¹It's also correctly described as one of the few films where Helen Mirren keeps her clothes on.

Scary Movie 2

It wasn't scary. And it wasn't that funny. But I still enjoyed it.

Who'd have thought that a bad movie could be saved by Tim Curry, of all people.

This movie was definitely struggling to find it's feet.

Third one's better. Might have to see the fourth at the cinema, it looks good.

Score: C-. Believe be, it would've been a D- or an E+ without Mr Curry.

OQ: Oh come one, it's college. It's time to experiment.