This week I have been mostly reorganising my house, watching 24 and a bunch of films.
Syriana is an ensemble piece (superbly acted by all) which wove together the stories of several characters with the oil business as the overriding theme. It's the kind of film that has quite high expectations of th audience and takes quite a while for the larger narrative to reveal itself. The ending is quite frankly a bit of a bummer, but it reinforces the overall theme: American powermongers will stop at nothing to get the upper hand in the oil business.
The Matador is a quirky buddy movie which works mainly because of the good chemistry between the leads Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear. It's Brosnan's film really though, and he's at his best in the first act when he's swaggering about in Mexico. Nice light viewing without become too silly, cheesy or sentimental.
Aeon Flux is a high-concept science fiction flick based on an baffling cartoon aired a while back by MTV. I never actually saw the cartoon originally but with the advent of the movie I was intrigued, and managed to pick up the DVD boxed set from Woolworths (only 15.99 people!) to see what was up. The animation is actually very difficult to describe - at one level it's just stylistic fluff - but at the same time it laces itself with subtle inferences to happiness, spirituality, romance etc. difficult to tell whether the artists were genuinely inspired or just tripping their nuts off. Why anyone would want to translate it into a live action film is even more of a mystery. It works though, kinda. The film starts well with plenty of visuals and some minimalist prophetic dialogue - in fact it only starts to go off the rails when they start introducing a proper plot and an explanation to everything. Having said that, although it ends up being a fairly mediocre sci-fi flick it's still head and shoulders above a lot of the pap you see produced in the genre. Surprising to see a quality actress like Charlize Theron on board though - this kind of style-over-substance fare is more normally associated with someone like Mila Jovovich.
Also worthy of another mention is Serenity which came out on DVD last week in the UK. I cannot praise this film enough. Joss Whedon is god. If you haven't seen it yet (or even if you have) go and buy a copy ASAP!
Syriana is an ensemble piece (superbly acted by all) which wove together the stories of several characters with the oil business as the overriding theme. It's the kind of film that has quite high expectations of th audience and takes quite a while for the larger narrative to reveal itself. The ending is quite frankly a bit of a bummer, but it reinforces the overall theme: American powermongers will stop at nothing to get the upper hand in the oil business.
The Matador is a quirky buddy movie which works mainly because of the good chemistry between the leads Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear. It's Brosnan's film really though, and he's at his best in the first act when he's swaggering about in Mexico. Nice light viewing without become too silly, cheesy or sentimental.
Aeon Flux is a high-concept science fiction flick based on an baffling cartoon aired a while back by MTV. I never actually saw the cartoon originally but with the advent of the movie I was intrigued, and managed to pick up the DVD boxed set from Woolworths (only 15.99 people!) to see what was up. The animation is actually very difficult to describe - at one level it's just stylistic fluff - but at the same time it laces itself with subtle inferences to happiness, spirituality, romance etc. difficult to tell whether the artists were genuinely inspired or just tripping their nuts off. Why anyone would want to translate it into a live action film is even more of a mystery. It works though, kinda. The film starts well with plenty of visuals and some minimalist prophetic dialogue - in fact it only starts to go off the rails when they start introducing a proper plot and an explanation to everything. Having said that, although it ends up being a fairly mediocre sci-fi flick it's still head and shoulders above a lot of the pap you see produced in the genre. Surprising to see a quality actress like Charlize Theron on board though - this kind of style-over-substance fare is more normally associated with someone like Mila Jovovich.
Also worthy of another mention is Serenity which came out on DVD last week in the UK. I cannot praise this film enough. Joss Whedon is god. If you haven't seen it yet (or even if you have) go and buy a copy ASAP!
VIEW 17 of 17 COMMENTS
elysia:
The sound is integral to the experience. I'm still waiting for a real one to come on the market. I'd sell all my internal organs for a play with a real light sabre.
creamygoodness:
Hehe, probably not, but it's not that important anyway