October 05, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized

Film Fight: September 2008

Unlike last month’s quiet patch, this month there are 6 films to take in.

The Wackness is about a teenage drug dealer and his psychiatrist becoming friends and going over the edge. The relationship that grows between the two leads is well handled, seeming genuine for the most part, but the same cannot be said for the somewhat forced love story between the teenager and the psychiatrist’s daughter. The dialogue throughout is excruciating (it’s supposed to be the nineties, so we get all kinds of street lingo), but there are some true horrors uttered between these two. Ben Kingsley excels as the psychiatrist but away from that there’s just not all that much to see here. A fairly average film.

The lack of decent US horror movies continues with the amazingly lacklustre yawn-fest, The Strangers. There’s nothing new or particularly well-done about this movie, taking in an alone-in-a-cabin plot and eventually getting to a pretty weak torture set-up towards the end. There’s little to like here, with the only notable moments being the (predictable) arrival of a familiar face going wrong and some of the character set-up in the first act. After that, it was uninspired drudge.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have made another great comedy in Pineapple Express, the story of a dealer and one of his customers (Rogen) who are forced to go on the run after witnessing a brutal murder; not the most obvious set-up for a light and wacky comedy. The writers largely avoid a lot of the more obvious and moronic drug references and instead get into some great dialogue (Danny McBride has some of the best lines) and over-the-top, violent, physical comedy. It looked like the trailer would have the majority of the scenarios in it, but this is not the case, with near enough end-to-end laughs. A great (if not classic) comedy.

It’s courted a lot of controversy for it’s use of Robert Downey Jr. doing a minstrel show and the heavy mocking of the mentally handicapped, but can Tropic Thunder deliver as a comedy? The answer is: not particularly. Sure, it has some very funny moments (Downey Jr. provides most of these, with Danny McBride again bringing impeccable timing) but the whole thing feels quite like a place-holder. The plot is there to hold together some scenarios they writers had built up, but doesn’t tell a compelling story. In the face of the far superior Pineapple Express, this suffers as another cheap-and-easy comedy. That’s not to say it lacks any merit, but it’s not a first choice.

Could a fascist (autocratic) regime rise once again? That’s the question that German-film, The Wave, asks. Based on a required reading book in Germany, the story is that of a teacher who, during project week, builds a cult to show that anything is possible if you’re not careful. We see a wide range of points-of-view, from the outraged to the the subsumed, all of which add a little extra. It’s got a strong message, but falls down on depth: there are too many ideas here and not enough time to develop them, and those previously mentioned views don’t go into as much detail as we might like. Ultimately, it’s a good movie, but could have done with a bit of script editing to give it cleaner focus.

Finally, Taken is a fairly simple movie done extremely well. A man, who we soon learn is an extremely well-trained solder/agent, finds that his daughter who is holidaying in Paris has been kidnapped. Despite a fairly simple progression (the man hunts his daughter’s kidnappers in as vicious a manner as you can imagine), it’s surprisingly good. We see some excellently choreographed fight and action sequences, we see some well-directed and succinct storytelling, and just enough background for it to be somewhat believable. An over-long ending and odd pop singer subplot aside, this is a lean cut of action-thriller. Very good.

The winner for September is a bit of a toss-up. Pineapple Express is excellent, but I think Taken is slightly stronger, though both are very good in their respective genres