Well, that wasn’t what I expected. Which I suppose begs the question as to what exactly I did expect. And to be honest, what I thought I’d get was a mess. Most likely a visually beautiful and endlessly inventive sort of a mess, but still a mess all the same.
Up
October 27, 2009Sooner or later, Pixar are going to make a bad film. The law of averages demands it. People will leave the cinema feeling Phantom Menace’d, knowing deep down that what they’ve just watched is rubbish, but afraid to actually admit as much out loud. And when someone finally is brave enough to say, “Actually, I didn’t think it was all that good,” there’ll be a massive release of pent-up criticism and “Thank God, you said that, I’ve been thinking the same.” But Up is not that film.
Zombieland
October 14, 2009It must’ve been a bit weird for Jesse Eisenberg to make two films in one year both ending in “land”, both featuring a fairground as a pivotal location in the narrative, and both basically being a story about him finally getting a girl. Then again, given that Adventureland was a sweet-natured coming of age comedy-drama and Zombieland, well, isn’t, deja vu probably wasn’t an issue.
Gamer
October 4, 2009I’d imagine the pitch meeting for Gamer went something like this:
“We’ve taken the basic idea of Death Race and replaced the racing with a shoot-em-up video game that uses real people instead of computer sprites, you know, because video games are really popular now. We’ve also replaced all of Death Race‘s humour and self-awareness with dialogue and characters culled from the very worst depths of 4chan, only without any understanding of their Net Age irony. And instead of Jason Statham, we’ve got Gerard Butler. Yeah, that’s right, the guy from 300. And P.S. I Love You. Let’s see if anyone notices.”
Well, I did. And I’m not too happy about it.
