Actually, I didn’t know she had gone, I checked out of this franchise after the first film. Not that I’d hated it or anything. As far as I recall. I think it was just that I saw it around the same time as that disaster of a film, Van Helsing, and so I ended up staying away from vampire films for a while.

All I remember of the first Underworld was that Kate Beckinsale looked damn fine in the outfit and I wished I looked that good in skin-tight pants. So, as far as I can tell, little has changed in the intervening 9 years. She’s pushing 40 and still looking well. But that’s not being fair to the film at all, it has a lot more to offer than Beckinsale… There’s Michael Ealy and Theo James for the ladies as well. Ah no, I jest, there is more than that, I swear.

This is the first of the series to be directed by Swedish duo, Måns Magnus Mårlind (what a name!) and Björn Stein. The only other English language film the pair have directed was Shelter, starring Julianne Moore. I haven’t seen it, but with a whopping 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m not exactly planning on picking it up.

With Shelter’s score in mind, I couldn’t help but wonder why Underworld: Awakening wasn’t screened for critics here. As we all know, this is rarely a good sign. Hence, I approached it with trepidation – and a 2 minute recap of the two films I’d missed from my cinema going partner. That trepidation was tempered by the fact that it’s an 18 cert film in Ireland and the UK. The Underworld franchise is hardly known for sex and nudity, so an 18 cert was bound to mean violence.

As it happened, I didn’t really need the recap. I remembered more of the first film than I thought and in any case there’s a short revisiting of the first three films at the start. With 3 years between films each time, I guess they’re used to having to bring the audience back up to speed quickly. The main thing you need to know is that in the last film, normal humans discovered the existence of the Lycans and Vampires. They were not happy about it.

So sets the stage for a “cleansing” of epic proportions.

I actually really enjoyed Underworld: Awakening. There’s always a lot to be said for having no expectations going into a film. I didn’t even know this film was out this week, that’s how in the dark I was. I wouldn’t go around saying it had the most amazing plot or performances… But, having already seen 4 out of the other 5 films out this week, I can say it’s probably the most entertaining of the week. Mind you, that’s still not saying much. I’ve only done the reviews of J. Edgar and Haywire so far, but you can take it from me that it’s a pretty poor week, Underworld 4 aside.

What’s most enjoyable about Underworld: Awakening is the action. With an 18 cert there’s no holding back. Selene kicks ass, and gets her ass kicked, from here to next Sunday with barely any let up. What let up there is is used to explain a perfectly serviceable plot. A rarity in a film like this these days. Recently action films seem to be struggling terribly hard with plots; unnecessary convolution is the order of the day. I can only assume they’re over-compensating out of a fear of being criticised for being too action oriented. I don’t know why they bother. People go to action films to see action. Right?

Anyway, with all the action on offer here, the target demographic should be satisfied. It’s worth mention as well that the 3D is pretty good. Ok, there are large parts of the film where you don’t need to wear your glasses, but it’s worth it for the parts where you do. Plus, it’s shot bright enough that you don’t have to worry about the type of murkiness that plagued The Darkest Hour. Of course… that’s not all that plagued The Darkest Hour, but that’s for a different review. You do still see that strange green hue you get with Real-D 3D glasses, but it actually suits the comic book stylings of the film so… it all works out really.

Some other reviews I’ve seen have criticised it as being a step away from the other 2 mythology-heavy sequels. Having never seen them, I have no idea if that’s true. Considering all 3 of the other Underworld films having come in for some fairly scathing reviews, I’m surprised they’ve decided to pick apart any changes.

As far as I’m concerned, if you’re looking for a glossy, 88 minute distraction with some good looking people being beaten every which way but loose… you could do much, much worse than Underworld: Awakening. This film is a bruised and bloodied hoot ‘n a half.

7/10

In more ways than one.

Man of the moment, Michael Fassbender, plays Brandon Sullivan, an Irish-American business suit type with an addiction to porn and sex with anonymous strangers. His life is going… relatively well really. His job hasn’t yet cottoned on to his problem – or at the least he must be making them enough money for it to not be a problem – and the ladies seem to fall at his feet. That is until his hot mess of a sister (Carey Mulligan) turns up.

That’s pretty much it. Ah no, it’s not really but it may as well be.

To be honest, I was sorely disappointed by Shame. There was so much buzz, so much hype around it and I just don’t think it’s worthy.

Which is not to say that you shouldn’t see it, Michael Fassbender puts on an excellent performance, one that may even warrant the honour of an Oscar nomination, but – in my opinion of course – there isn’t much more reason to see it. I’m just not sure why it’s a film at all. It is an intimate and granular portrait of a man consumed by his demons, no doubt, but as a film it just didn’t make for compelling viewing, for me.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Looking back over my review of director Steve McQueen’s last film, Hunger, I had similar issues. Not quite the same but similar. In Hunger we weren’t shown any of the motivations for the characters. That wasn’t a problem for it though, there was a delicate balance to be struck in telling the story of Bobby Sands’ last days on earth and McQueen managed it. Shame is an entirely different kind of story though and I think McQueen needed to take a chance here and bring us a more critical eye, or perhaps a more benign one, I’m not fussy. Any kind of commentary would have been welcome.

Like in Hunger, Fassbender’s nymphomaniac exists without any context or motivation. He is an empty vessel, waiting to be (ful)filled. We never get a sense of who he is beyond his addiction and we never… get beyond his addiction. There are some excellent and moving scenes with Mulligan but there’s a tendency to stifle the emotion. Which is, ostensibly, the perogative of the character but as a viewer it merely leads to frustration.

It’s also, probably, worth mention that this is an 18 rated movie and, as you would expect, is rife with relatively explicit scenes of a sexual nature. His hypersexuality is depicted time and time again, to the point that it gets quite boring. I imagine perhaps this is the point… however, it still means you’re boring your audience.

It is, therefore, a shame. Shame, because I think that there’s a lot more in the story that could have been explored. Shame, that Fassbender’s fantastically nuanced performance lies flat in a film that seems content to pinwheel around random meaningless encounters. And lastly, Shame, because I had to sit through another movie where Carey Mulligan seems intent on maintaining her 70:30, crying to not-crying, ratio of screen time.

I feel like I’m being unecessarily harsh. There were things I liked about it… I liked how it looked. There were some nice shots, I particularly liked the running scene. I liked the music… I didn’t actually hate the film. Fassbender gives us a perfect, outsider sense of who Sullivan is at this point in his life. As a portrait of a man, it is crystalline. You feel his torment in his eyes, in the lines of his face… But there’s just nothing there at the core. I don’t know what this film was trying to say to me… All I can say is… Why?

And don’t get me started on the ending. I was truly riled by the ending. I’m not going to give it away but I could probably write another few paragraphs on what was wrong with the 5 mins or so of the film…

… Sorry, I just had to get that in there.

5.5/10

Course, more often than not, being a horror fan involves watching a lot of terrible horror films. And, more often than not, those terrible films are sequels or remakes. It was with this in mind that I sat down to watch the remake/reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street courtesy of Phantom 105.2′s preview screening competition (Thanks guys!).

As I’m sure you’re aware, Nightmare on Elm Street is an old and esteemed horror franchise. It started in 1984 with… believe it or not, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Seven films later, in 2003, Freddy was still going strong in the battle of the legends – Freddy vs. Jason. What an awesome battle it was. The two best slasher franchises had come together for a rollicking good time.

I, for one, was happy with the way both the Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees stories had gone. Particularly with the last real Friday the 13th film, Jason X… Jason in space. It was brilliant. Then some muppet decided to remake/reboot the original Friday the 13th. Here’s a link was to my review. I did not like that film.

Given that disaster, I’m sure you can understand why I was pretty skeptical when I heard they were rebooting Freddy. With a new Freddy no less. Hmmm… Then again, I’m generally willing to give a film a chance and while I don’t really know that much about Jackie Earle Haley, I had nothing against him. I really liked Watchmen so I figured he was probably pretty cool. Besides, the legend Robert Englund seemed to approve so… I was game for it.

So the scene was set. New Freddy, New Nightmare.

The first 10-15 mins or so of the film really disturbed me. I really thought it was going down the same route as the new Friday. Last thing I wanted. Another ruined horror franchise. Luckily it moved away from that. Not really far away enough but AWAY… that’s what’s important.

I actually ended up liking the film. The problem was, however, that it seemed a bit pointless. I had to keep reminding myself to try to forget other slasher films I’d seem. After all, it was films like Nightmare that really established the slasher genre. To try and go back to the beginning of the franchise is like trying to forget the last 15 years of horror. Difficult when horror, and particularly recent horror, tries so hard to make itself memorable by throwing so much at us. I do find it hard to be shocked any more. Even the ol’ jump scenes pass me by these days…

… well they did in this film anyway. I’m tired of them and I wasn’t in the mood for the cheap tricks. Fortunately that wasn’t all this film had and definitely in the last 10-15 mins or so I really thought it had found a groove, good tension and all. Pity it was just finishing.

The gist of it is that I thought A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) was alright. I can’t say that it added anything to the franchise. I certainly don’t think it breathed new life into the genre but in a way I’m not really qualified to answer that. I’m not part of the new audience that they are undoubtedly trying to bring in.

I felt like the film was trying to bring in the kids who have been reared on the Final Destination side of horror, trying to show them something a little more disturbing, a little more horrific, a little smarter. That was really the overriding thought for me. I thought that if I had never seen a Freddy film (or classics like The Exorcist for that matter) I would have thought it was really good.

I’d love to hear what anyone else thought of it. Are you an old school horror fan who hated it? Or are you a new horror watcher who loved it? Or maybe you all just hated it. Let me know.

Oh, to mark this new Nightmare on Elm Street film I was thinking of having a little competition. How does a box set of the first 7 Nightmare films sound? The competition will be open to everyone however bear in mind that it will be a region 2 DVD so if you can’t watch them then I guess there’s no point in entering. Details will be on the facebook page over the coming days so become a fan or as they say now – “like” the page – to get the update on it.

6/10

I saw Cemetery Junction a good while back actually, at an early press screening a few weeks before it was released. I had to sign a embargo agreement though so I wasn’t able to blog / tweet about it at the time. It was probably best for them that I did sign that agreement… because I hated it.

Since the film has come out I’ve been seeing quite positive reviews for it. I honestly can’t understand that. I thought this was an awful film. Ok… maybe that’s a bit harsh. It wasn’t horrific or anything, we’ve not talking about worst ever territory. It’s just that it was all so terribly dull, unoriginal, flat, tiresome, boring… you get the picture. I did not think it was a good film.

My main problem with it was that there was no edge to it. As far as I can gather it’s supposed to be a coming of age film about three aimless losers in a nothing town who want to leave. And it kind of is, but it’s done in such a woolly, fluffy, cop-out way that it hardly matters what it’s about. The whole film dances along a line to its completely predictable conclusion. It’s as insubstantial as its oft repeated inane joke. In fact, the script repeats so many exchanges I started to wonder if they used Copy & Paste just to make the film a bit longer. As though it needed to be longer, 95 mins? It felt like 3 hours.

Most of the characters were shallow, half moulded stereotypes. Damsel in distress, evil boss, conniving fiancée of our damsel, angry young man (complete with black polo neck), village idiot, racist grandmother, Ricky Gervais. It was like watching a cartoon, no depth whatsoever. To be fair the lead was decent and likeable and there was a reasonable attempt to give him some motivation… though he was saddled with a script that had him flip flopping for no apparent reason. It makes me wonder if Gervais and Merchant are only capable of writing caricatures, unable to form normal, fully rounded people.

I really don’t know how this film has got any positive reviews. I’m baffled to the point of wondering if I actually saw a different cut from what went into the cinemas. I don’t see how it could be getting such good ratings. Perhaps people just love Ricky Gervais that much.

Oh by the way, this isn’t a comedy. Now, I didn’t think it was going to be a comedy so it’s not like I didn’t like it because it wasn’t what I expected. But I do think people who don’t know anything about it and are thinking of going just because they’ve seen Gervais’s name on the poster and they think he’s funny should be warned that this isn’t meant to be a riotous comedy. Don’t take this as a particular criticism on my part though, it’s just a fact.

So basically, I hated it and I don’t think anyone should bother wasting their time watching it. I will make this one concession though. There was one good scene toward the end which I did think had a sharpness and a reality to it. It was like they’d taken it from some other good film and spliced it in by accident.

That’s probably enough ranting from me… though to be honest I feel like I’ve gone easy on it. Oh well…

3/10

Which may disappoint people. Personally though, I don’t really remember the Bourne movies all that well so it’s neither here nor there. I do have a vague memory that there were some great one-on-one fights scenes and that they reminded me of Bond so… nothing like Green Zone then.

Green Zone is basically a mystery set in a war. Matt Damon is the star but it’s not really just about Matt Damon, it’s more like Body of Lies. It’s not about the guy doing the hunting. It’s about what he’s hunting. Well, it’s not really about what he’s hunting – he’s hunting them ol’ WMDs – it’s about why he’s hunting them. Yeah. That’s basically what it’s about. BTW it may seem like I’m giving stuff away but I’m really not. There aren’t any spoilers in this review.

I didn’t really like Green Zone. It held my attention and it was enjoyable enough. It was actually a pretty decent movie, I just didn’t like it.

I found the shooting style really annoying and the convoluted way the story unfolded was irritating. It’s a shame because I actually think all the actors did a good job and their characters were all fairly sufficiently framed and explained. Well almost all of them were anyway. Plus with Invictus and now this, I’m really starting to like Mr. Damon. But the plot development and the shooting style aren’t the reason I didn’t really like it, there was just something about it that just didn’t fly with me. Two things actually.

First of all, I didn’t find it very believable. Obviously it was believable that he never found those pesky WMDs… but I didn’t find it believable that a solider like the one Damon was portraying, would be so pissed off as to do something about it. I guess I always think of soldiers as people who took pride in following orders. Nothing wrong with that by the way. I’m no anarchist. But it just seemed a bit far fetched. It’s possible that this was just the type of soldier that Miller is but we certainly weren’t shown that beforehand.

Maybe we’re just supposed to infer it from how he acts later on but to me, it just wasn’t believable. If he was some kind of maverick then how did he get to the level he was at? And if he’s not some kind of maverick then he must have had some strong moral core that we haven’t seen. I didn’t like having to make up a character from his runnings around. It distracted from story and it was confusing. Why was he bothered doing the running around in the first place?

Secondly, and I guess this is really why I didn’t like. I thought it was a bit simplistic. Soldier is annoyed about the lack of WMDs, soldier meets a couple of people and tries to solve this annoyance. I would have thought there’d be a lot more to the story of the lack of WMDs in Iraq. I know there’s a lot more to this story.

I can understand taking a vignette of a wider story and turning it into a film – that’s basically what The Hurt Locker did – but that doesn’t feel like what they’ve tried to do here. It’s like they tried to make a wider story into a simple action hero story, found it didn’t fit and made it into a action mystery instead. It’s a complicated issue and I just think that they were paying lip service to it.

Which is not to say that I wanted to see some kind of political thriller. Just that there was a lack of balance to this film. I said in my review of Body of Lies that I was pleasantly surprised, it wasn’t my kind of film but I liked it because of the balance in the story. This is exactly what Green Zone lacked. It felt like a bit it was see-sawing between action, war, drama and thriller without enough of any. Ok that’s a bit of a complicated see-saw but you know what I mean.

These two problems I had, coupled with the annoying camera work and messy plot progression (ironic in a story which I said was too simple), made for a film that I didn’t really like. To be honest if it wasn’t for the camera work and the messy plot then I probably would have overlooked the two other problems and just let the movie wash over but as it was I couldn’t. It was all just off for me.

That all said, I’m not going to say “Don’t go see it”. I never really say don’t go see a film. Just don’t go expecting an intriguing complex investigation into the Iraq war and the reasons behind it. Or Bourne 4: The Bourne War, it’s not that either. At best it’s an entertaining mystery film with some good action scenes thrown in. I just couldn’t see it at its best.

6/10

The Princess and the Frog is Disney’s latest animated tale. I haven’t seen it myself but a few people I know went along to the Irish premiere and I gather that it’s great. Apparently it really harkens back to the old style Disney storytelling and really is a beautiful tale. Some have commented that it’s a little scary for kids but personally… I think kids should be scared on occasion! It’s good for them! Then again, I don’t have kids…

The reason I decided to highlight this film over others is really that it’s notable for two reasons. Firstly, lately everyone who makes kids animations seems to be into CGI and 3D, for this film Disney has decided to go back to their traditional animation techniques. I think that’s nice to see. Secondly, it’s the first time Disney has had an African-American princess. Now I’m not a member of the PC brigade but I do think that there’s lots of little girls (and perhaps boys, I don’t know) who dream of being their favourite Disney princess so I, for one, am glad there’s an African-American one up there now.

I’m sure there’s some internet debate somewhere that’ll tell you all about how this view is somehow racist or sexist or something but to be honest, I don’t give a damn.

Youth In Revolt stars everybody’s favourite good boy Michael Cera. Aww, isn’t he nice. I’m sure there’s a fair chance that this will be like most other comedies that Cera is in – funny, quirky, sweet etc. – but that’s not a bad thing, I like his films. Plus I did laugh out loud at this trailer so that’s always a good sign. Oh also Zack Galifianakis and Justin Long are in it. I’ve always found them very funny in supporting roles, remember Long in Zack and Miri Make a Porno? Very funny.

Youth in Revolt is based on a character from the novels by C.D. Payne. Wikipedia describes him as an author of absurdist fiction… sounds like find. I don’t actually know anything about these novels, having just heard of them now, but from the trailer there seems to be some kind of a Tyler Durden thing going on with Cera’s character. Maybe this is something from the books.

If you haven’t heard of the film or haven’t made up your mind yet, have a look at the trailer anyway. I thought it was funny I hope you will too. You can see it on apple.com/trailers, I recommend the second trailer.

Other films coming to Irish cinemas this week are:
Astro Boy – animated kids sci-fi action film following the adventures of a robot boy in a futuristic city.
Invictus – Clint Eastwood-directed story of how Nelson Mandela set out to unite his country behind their rugby team when South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup
Eamon – an Irish comedy centre about a family on holiday with their slightly dysfunctional child. Only playing in the IFI in Temple Bar, Dublin.
Mugabe and the White African – BAFTA nominated documentary about one of the few remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe who took a legal challenge against Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.

Youth In Revolt, The Princess & The Frog, Invictus, Astro Boy, Eamon and Mugabe and the White African are all in Irish cinemas from Friday 5th February 2010.

Nowhere Boy is a biopic centred around the early life of John Lennon, from around when he starts playing guitar. I’m not actually sure how accurate a portrayal it is. It’s apparently based on Julia Baird’s memoir called Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon. She was his half sister. It appears that the director disagreed with McCartney regarding the potrayal of Lennon’s aunt but given that most of the people involved are dead I guess we’ll never really know. Apparently things were not as… heated, shall we say, as they might appear in the film. I sort of assume that the truth is somewhere in the middle, I’d like to think that if it was completely inaccurate there’d be more hullaballo over the film. Either way, it certainly told me a lot more about John Lennon than I knew before.

I guess since all this is a matter of public record, it’s not really spoiling to say that I never knew there was anything different about Lennon’s early life; that his father left when he was young or that he was raised by his aunt or anything like that. It was interesting to learn about him after all I would consider myself a big fan of The Beatles. I mean it’s not like I own any of their albums or anything but I think highly of them… that’s what happens when you’re as averse to spending money as I am.

So, I found myself really enjoying this film. A lot of this was down to the kid playing Lennon, Aaron Johnson, he was very good. I really thought he captured the idea of Lennon’s character in the film. This kind of cheeky tear-away, charismatic but at the cusp of being dangerous. I have no idea if Lennon was really like that but I believed Johnson.

To be clear though, this isn’t a film about The Beatles so if you’re expecting any of that you’ll be sorely disappointed. They don’t even say the name in film. Paul McCartney is around but only briefly really. Given his reported misgivings about it’s accuracy I wonder if he’s seen the film.

I’ve often thought it must be really odd for McCartney and well… just Beatles week on BBC last year. All this fuss about what must have been for them, it’s just a few mad years they had when they were younger. They’ve lived a long time since then, I’m sure they like looking back at some of it but surely when people draw conclusions about what it was like, for example in this film, it must be very strange for them.

Guess I’ll never know.

Anyway, I did like this film. I wouldn’t recommend that it’s one for everyone but if you are interested in a family drama and you’re willing to accept that you’re probably watching a somewhat skewed version of Lennon’s childhood then give it a look.

7/10

When I talked about Daybreakers the other week I mentioned that, although I thought it looked great, I was a bit concerned about the fact that I’d never heard of the writer/directors – Michael and Peter Spierig. Turns out I had reason to be concerned.

Daybreakers really had the potential to be a good film. I swear, it really did. I thought it had good solid ideas and it had a good cast; you can’t fault Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe or Sam Neill for the performances they put on. I put the blame for this terrible waste squarely on the writer/directors.

The premise is solid. It’s some time in the future and most of the people on Earth have been turned into vampires. Complete with that vampiric lust for blood. The thing is they are still essentially living human lives, they have jobs, they go shopping, the kids go to school, everything is normal except that it’s all conducted at night. And they need to drink human blood. Unfortunately for them there aren’t many humans left for the blood harvesting and without human blood the vampires turn into crazed mutants. All this you can pick up from the trailer so I’m not giving anything away there. There are other ideas that follow on for this and for the most part they are pretty sound.

The issue is with the execution. About half way through Daybreakers I was thinking “Wow, some day this could be a great remake” and I really do hope that someone does remake it. It was just a mess, the story emphasis was all wrong. They spent ages on things that didn’t matter and not enough time on things that were interesting. They tried to do a bit of gory horror then they changed their minds, they tried to do a bit of moral drama and they changed their minds. It was all over the place. It was honestly as though they took a holiday in the middle of making the film then forgot what story they were trying to tell.

Which is not to say that I regret seeing it, it was a bit of a laugh and Willem Dafoe is great fun, wish he had a few more scenes. But I can’t really recommend it to anyone. Maybe as a curiosity. It looked good as well, very… shiny. Anyway, if you are going along just don’t expect too much from it and if we’re lucky in a few years someone else will pick up the story and run with it. Preferably with the same cast but obviously I can’t imagine that ever happening. Maybe we can reverse things and an Asian director, like Joon-ho Bong (who directed The Host and Memories of Murder) can do the remake.

5.5/10

Up In The Air is based on a novel of the same name by Walter Kirn. I don’t know that novel but I am familiar with the director – Jason Reitman. He directed Juno but more importantly he directed the excellent Thank You for Smoking. A film I would heartily recommend to everyone. Up In The Air I also recommend… and on balance I would recommend it to everyone… but with certain reservations.

I guess I’ll have to explain a bit about this film, I won’t be giving anything away that you haven’t seen in the trailers though so don’t worry.

Basically George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man who’s dedicated to his job. His job happens to be a professional firer. He’s contracted out to other companies to tell their staff that they’re fired. He lives his life in airports, on planes and in boardrooms all over the USA, rarely physically “touching base” as they say. When a new recruit, played by Anna Kendrick, comes on board, Ryan finds himself saddled with… baggage.

To be honest, I didn’t find it completely engaging, but then again I did like it. It’s a bit of a puzzler because so many people I know really thought it was brilliant. I found it difficult to relate to. Course I am lucky; I still have my job… I know more than a few people who have lost theirs in the last 12 months, but this film isn’t really about that anyway. It’s about… what people value in life… to sum it up in one. I still don’t really know why I found this film so difficult to relate to though. Perhaps it depicts a lifestyle and an attitude that is so far from my own that I just don’t understand it.

So, when I say I’m recommending it with reservations it’s because, while I wasn’t mad about it, I can’t deny that there is something to it. I’ve thought long and hard about what I didn’t like about it and I can’t point to it so I have no reason to not recommend it. Especially when there’s a chance that others will take a great deal from it. The only thing I will say against it is that I thought it was a little slick…

For what it’s worth, it is a smart, solid story and, as I mentioned earlier in the week, there are some great poignant scenes. There’s a bit of drama, there’s a bit of romance, but it just never quite came together for me. It is however a very good character study and George Clooney does a good job. Anna Kendrick is grand as well. I’d never heard of her before but I gather she’s in Twilight, so good for her, this should keep her out of the typecasting for a while.

Hmm… It probably is time I started talking about the Oscar buzz. Everyone else is after all.

This is probably one of the most hotly tipped contenders for the Oscars. It’s been nominated for 6 Golden Globes and it’s George Clooney who’s attracting most of the heat. So far in the awards season he’s well ahead in the Best Actor stakes. Ok, last night he just missed out on the Critics Choice Award however with the Golden Globes tomorrow it’s hardly the one he’s focussed on.

Having seen the film, I don’t know if he’ll get the Oscar. We all know that it’s not necessarily all down to the performance but I just don’t know that he’s done enough here to win. The other thing is is that I do believe that the Oscars like to be different… so all his wins may put him out a little bit here. Then again, I hear this year they’re trying to be a bit more populist, extendeding the best picture category to 10 to take in a bigger range of films and all. It’s really a hard one to call.

Then again, who are the other contenders? As I also mentioned earlier in the week, I hear that Colin Firth gives the performance of a lifetime in A Single Man. I’ve seen The Road now and while I’d say Viggo Mortensen has a good chance at a Oscar nomination but I don’t think the buzz is there and I’m not sure the range in his performance is big enough win it for him. I’m still holding out for Jeremy Renner and his performance in The Hurt Locker but the thing is I’m really not feeling the buzz around anyone else this year. Maybe Clooney has it in the bag.

Best picture wise… again I’d like to say The Hurt Locker over Up In The Air? Well actually I’d like to say Inglourious Basterds but that’s just not going to happen. What do you think yourselves?

Anyway I forgot to do the rating before I started talking about awards… so here you go.

7.5/10

REVELATIONS 6:8

I was looking forward to The Road. As I mentioned in some previous posts, I’m all about post-apocalyse movies.

Post-apocalypse / dystopia a favourite genre of mine. I really like the idea of examining how individuals and society (or societies) might respond in the face of total catastrophe. I suppose I just feel that society is, to a certain degree, a self-perpetuating artificial construct so I wonder, if there is an interruption, what changes would that bring to its perpetuation. Would society collapse? If it does, would a new one rise from its ashes? Would they build it better? Or would the individuals left just eke out survival and that would be it. Is there a critical mass of people needed to create a functioning society? What would happen? It’s fascinating.

Sorry about that random diversion, it’s just that I’ve said in so many posts over the last while that I like post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories so I thought it was about time that I explained it a bit…

Anyway.

This film is an adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. He also wrote the novel that 2007′s No Country For Old Men is based on dontyerknow. It’s directed by John Hillcoat, who I hadn’t really heard of before, and stars Viggo Mortensen, a man who surely deserves an Oscar by now. Actually I thought he deserved one for A History of Violence but he wasn’t even nominated that year… Basically The Road is about a man and a boy trying to survive in the world after an unexplained apocalypse.

I really thought I would like this film. Well… ok, it’s not that I didn’t like it… I was just left with the distinct impression that I had seen it all before. And yes, I’ve see a lot of this genre of film and I’ve read a good bit of this genre as well so maybe I have seen it all before; but I was rather hoping that there would be something different about this one. I don’t believe that it’s a completely “done” genre. I still believe that these can be powerful emotional stories, whether they are cautionary, hopeful, funny, depressing, introspective, whatever. Everyone I knew who had read the book says it is so depressing and the reviews (that I’ve skimmed over) are all saying that it’s so crushingly depressing so I was expecting more of an emotional punch here… and I think they missed the mark.

Ok, it was depressing… it’s post-apocalypse. It’s generally depressing. But I didn’t feel involved in their story. Now I will admit, I do generally prefer the genre with a bit more hope than this film and maybe more hope would have made me feel more involved with them… but I don’t really think that was the problem. I think one of the problems I had was that we got little sense of what was driving them. Sure there’s that primal urge to survive, that fire, but it was never fully dealt with in the film. What was driving them? Is it hope? Is it sheer bloody mindedness? There are hints of religion here and there but again, not fully dealt with. Even the breakdown of society wasn’t particularly dealt with…

As far as I’m concerned, if you’re not examining the individuals, the society or any particular relateable thematic element (like faith or war or the environment) and nothing much happens plotwise then what is your film about anyway? It’s just a cold look at two people taking a long walk down a road to nowhere… and this walk wasn’t half as eventful as that other long walk Viggo Mortensen went on not that long ago…

…Oh, I don’t know, maybe this is meant to be a story about a father’s love for his son or something. I hope not, because I think that would draw unfair conclusions about the mother… unfair because her story’s never really told either. I’m clutching at straws to find a point to this film really and uh… I kinda sound like I hated it, I didn’t hate it. I guess I just wanted it to be more than just run of the mill. It was very… flat. Well there was one scene in particular that I really liked. That one where our characters showed an emotion other than fear or anger. That was a good scene. I do wish I had read the book, maybe it fills in some blanks…

…Or maybe I really have just seen this story too many times.

Nah.

5.5/10