Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts

Saturday, 21 January 2017

The Doom Generation

Year of Release:  1995
Director:  Gregg Araki
Screenplay:  Gregg Araki
Starring:  Rose McGowan, James Duval, Johnathon Schaech
Running Time:  83 minutes
Genre:   dark comedy, drama, crime

Amy Blue (McGowan) is nihilistic, angry and bored with herself, with her friends, with her world.  Her main interests are drugs, music and sex (not necessarily in that order), and she maintains an affectionate relationship, withe her sweet, good-natured boyfriend Jordan (Duval).  One night handsome, violent drifter Xavier, nicknamed "X", (Schaech), literally falls onto their car and, after a convenience store clerk is accidentally killed during an impromptu robbery, the three find themselves on the run in a surreal, violent, hallucinatory USA.

A principal figure in the "New Queer Cinema" movement of the late 1980s to early '90s, this was billed as "a heterosexual movie"  by Araki.  In reality it is and it isn't, while the more obvious object of desire is the seductive Amy, it's plain to see that the real love story is between guys Jordan and Xavier.  It feeds quite neatly into the "lovers-on-the-run" road movie genre that was popular in the 1990s (such as Wild at Heart (1990), True Romance (1993) and Natural Born Killers (1994)), but this is funnier than most and stylish.  Full of inventive production design and a superb central performance from McGowan, this is a dark, violent and bleak film.  The film, is full of scenes of characters eating, but rarely has food been filmed as unappetizing as what is proved to be the source, with all the artifificial elements accentuated and fearful.  Everything about the film screams late 1990s and yet it is still relevant today.


     James Duval, Jonathon Schaech and Rose McGowan are the Doom Generation.

Saturday, 30 July 2016

Jason Bourne

Year of Release:  2016
Director:  Paul Greengrass
Screenplay:  Paul Greengrass and Christopher Rouse, based on characters created by Robert Ludlum
Starring:  Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed
Running Time:  123 minutes
Genre:  Thriller, action

Back in 2002, The Bourne Identity, based on the 1980 novel by Robert Ludlum, was hailed as a breath of fresh air for the spy movie genre, which at that point was completely dominated by the increasingly irrelevant and fantastical James Bond films.  Instead this was gritty, pertinent and realistic.  It was followed by The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and The Bourne Legacy (2012), the odd one out of the series in that the character of Jason Bourne does not appear.

This film, the fifth in the series, and the fourth to feature Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, takes up from the end of The Bourne Ultimatum.  Jason Bourne is living off the grid, making money with illegal fighting, when he is alerted by hacker Nicky Parsons (Stiles) of the existence of files, concerning Bourne's identity and the truth behind his father.  This kicks off a globe trotting quest for the truth, from Athens to Berlin, to London, to Las Vegas, however Bourne is being pursued by CIA Director Robert Dewey (Jones) who wants him dead and the ruthless hired killer, The Asset (Cassel).  Bourne's only help comes from CIA Cyber Ops agent Heather Lee (Vikander).

This is a tense, exciting thriller.  Director Paul Greengrass has a background in current affairs, and television docu-dramas, and that can be seen in his extensive use of fast cutting, and constantly moving, hand-held style of shooting, this can be very distracting in dialogue scenes, but it adds a real intensity and physicality to the film's action scenes.  And this has some of the best action scenes of any film this year.  The chase through an anti-austerity demonstration in Athens is memorable, but a car chase through Las Vegas is fantastic.  A big theme in the film is surveillance, and Greengrass' style does work for that, with the camera zooming and moving back and forth to find the characters in a crowd, does seem at times like it is footage filmed through a spy camera.  However, I would warn you to be careful, if you're prone to headaches or motion sickness.

The film's main problem is the impassivity of Matt Damon as Bourne, never really showing much emotion beyond impatience, it's hard to really care much about him, when he never really seems particularly fazed by anything.  Alicia Vikander is good as the sympathetic agent, but for the most part she doesn't really have much to do.  Tommy Lee Jones is effective though as the avuncular but murderous CIA Director.                  


Matt Damon is Jason Bourne

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Year:  2011
Director:  Brad Bird
Screenplay:  Andre Nemec and Josh Appelbaum, based on the television series Mission:  Impossible created by Bruce Geller
Starring:  Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton
Running Time:  133 minutes
Genre:  Spy, thriller, action

After escaping from a Russian prison, secret agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise), a member of the top secret Impossible Mission Force, finds himself pitted against a ruthless terrorist (Michale Nyqvist) who has stolen the codes to launch Russian nuclear missiles and plans to use them to start an all out nuclear war.  However Hunt has the aid of Jane Carter (Patton) who has her own personal reasons for targeting the terrorist group, computer specialist Benji Dunn (Pegg), and IMF chief analyst William Brandt (Renner).  However Hunt and his team have been set up to take the blame for an attack on the Kremlin, and the US Government have instituted a "Ghost Protocol", which effectively means that they have disavowed all knowledge of Hunt and his team's existence.

This film is the fourth movie to be spun off from the popular Mission:  Impossible TV series which ran from 1966 to 1973, and is best enjoyed as a ride.  Shown in the IMAX format it is a delirious range of spectacular action set pieces, however it does get bogged down in the dialogue scenes.  It's full of narrow escapes and miraculous survival, however while the film is running it's too entertaining to really bother with plot details.  The movie is like a James Bond film.  It sets out to give the audience an entertaining ride with plenty of action and stunts and special effects and it succeeds in that.  The cast are engaging enough, especially Simon Pegg who injects warmth and humour into his part as newly minted agent Benji Dunn.  The main problem is that the storyline plays a little too much like a video game, and the villains never really make much of an impression.
It's an entertaining, enjoyable movie and it's a lot of fun.


Tom Cruise wishes he had taken the stairs in Mission:  Impossible - Ghost Protocol.


Sunday, 4 December 2011

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Year:  1998
Director:  Terry Gilliam
Screenplay:  Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni, Alex Cox and Tod Davies, based on the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson 
Starring:  Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro
Running Time:  119 minutes
Genre:  Drama, comedy,

This film is a screen adaptation of the cult 1971 book by Hunter S. Thompson.  In 1971, journalist Raoul Duke (Depp) and his friend and attorney Doctor Gonzo (del Toro) travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas because Duke has an assignment to cover a prestigious motorcycle race, however they have equipped themselves with an astonishing arsenal of alcohol and illegal drugs, and manage to turn a simple sportswriting assignment into a prolonged binge of drug and alcohol fueled madness, as they tear Las Vegas apart and glimpse the dark side of the American Dream.

The film uses a barrage of visual and auditory techniques to recreate the experiences of Duke and Gonzo.  Director Terry Gilliam has a strong visual sense and the frequent use of TV screens showing footage from the Vietnam war and the anti-war protests give a sense of the wider world at the time. 

The development of the film was protracted and troubled.  Both Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone at various times tried and failed to get film versions of the book off the ground, and Ralph Bakshi at one time tried to do it as an animated film.  Eventually British director Alex Cox was hired as a director for the film, until he fell out with Thompson and was dropped, although he is still credited as co-writer on the film.

The film features impressive performances.  Benicio del Toro put on 45 pounds in nine weeks for his role and extensively researched the life of the real life attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta (upon whom the character of Doctor Gonzo was based)  and Johnny Depp lived in Hunter Thompson's home for four months and formed a strong friendship with the writer which lasted until Thompson's death in 2005.  Raoul Duke is pretty obviously Hunter Thompson (at one point the name Raoul Duke is referred to as an assumed name, and in another scene he recieves a telegram addressed to "Thompson").  There are also a number of well-known actors in small roles, including Tobey Maguire, Cameron Diaz, Christina Ricci, Ellen Barkin and Gary Busey. 

The tone of the film veers from wild comedy to genuinely disturbing sequences and creates a powerful and memorable viewing experience.        


Benicio del Toro and Johnny Depp take a trip in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas