March | 2013 | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: White Elephant (Elefante Blanco)

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2013.

Elefante Blanco is visually stunning. Director Pablo Trapero makes excellent use of the film’s setting to construct compelling and powerful images, as characters get lost amid the slums or wander through the ruins of the long-abandoned shell of what might have been the largest hospital in South America. Unfortunately, for all the visceral and visual energy that Elefante Blanco packs, it feels remarkably shallow and trite in its portrayal of life inside those slums, and the challenges facing two priests trying to help the community get back on their feet.

Don’t worry, we can build on this…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: art, Carlos Mugica, dublin, Elefante Blanco, film, Film festival, jameson dublin international film festival, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2013, Movie, Pablo Trapero, South America | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Robot & Frank

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2013.

Robot & Frank is perhaps best described as a live-action Pixar film, a lost script or concept from that period only a few years ago when it seemed like the studio could do no wrong. The beauty of films like The Incredibles or Toy Story 3 was the way that these fantasies allowed us to engage with incredibly adult issues in a disarmingly wondrous way. Up could deal with the pain of loss in great detail, because it was really the story of a man flying his house to South America, right? Finding Nemo could play out the darkest fears lurking in a parent’s subconscious, because it was really about cute fish, correct?

And so Robot & Frank provides a wonderful vehicle for the exploration of what growing old really means, and how we cope with the challenges that it presents. Because, after all, it’s just a film with a cute-looking robot butler, right?

Frank’ll test his metal…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: art, Domestic robot, film, Film festival, Frank, frank langella, jameson dublin international film festival, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2013, kevin spacey, Langella, Movie, non-review review, Peter Sarsgaard, pixar, review, Robot & Frank, Ryan Gosling, South America, toy story 3, United States | 2 Comments »

Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons (Review)

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

Terror of the Autons originally aired in 1971.

That jackanapes! All he ever does is cause trouble!

– nice to see the Doctor taking the Master seriously

I think you can make a fairly credible argument that Jon Pertwee’s first season of Doctor Who stands out as one of the best years the show ever produced. Facing the challenge of migrating from black-and-white to colour, and forced to tell stories entirely set on present-day Earth, the writers and producers managed to craft a season of television that I think stands quite well when measured against the very best of vintage BBC science-fiction. Sure, there may have been walking shop-front dummies, lizard people, animal men and haunted space suits, but the stories were surprisingly mature and relatively clever. The writers used the framework of Doctor Who to tell four very good and very philosophical stories exploring both bold science-fiction high-concepts (alternate universes) and also moral quandaries (how humanity relates to the unknown).

Terror of the Autons is the first story in Jon Pertwee’s second season. I’m actually quite fond of it, and it’s packed to the brim with iconic imagery, so it’s very difficult to be too critical of it. After all, any adventure that left so large an impression on the public imagination must have something to recommend it. However, there’s a very clear sense of regression here. It seems, from this first serial of Pertwee’s second year, that the agenda has changed somewhat.

Terror of the Autons is arguably more indicative of Pertwee’s time in the lead role than any of those stories from his first year. It’s exciting, it’s fast-paced, it has a decidedly man-of-mystery feeling to it, but it also feels somewhat light and a little insubstantial. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it just feels like a definite regression.

Master of the Whoniverse?

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Auton, Barry Letts, bbc, Beverly Crusher, Brigadier, doctor, doctor who, Holmes, Jo Grant, Jon Pertwee, Mary Whitehouse, Master, Robert Holmes, russell t. davies, Scotland Yard, Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, Third Doctor | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen (Review)

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Darren

Attack of the Cybermen originally aired in 1985.

We realise this must be confusing for you.

– Threst tells it how it is

There is a tendency, these days, to be more sympathetic in appraisals of the Colin Baker years. Everybody – including Baker – accepts that his tenure could have gone a lot smoother. Watching Attack of the Cybermen, I can’t help but feel sorry for just about everybody involved. Rewatching Colin Baker’s first season, I can’t help but feel that the problem with this period of the show wasn’t that the production crew were making new mistakes or deviating from good ideas. It seems quite apparent that a lot of the major problems were embedded during Peter Davison’s time in the role.

The problem with Colin Baker’s first year on the show was that the writers and producers allowed those already significant flaws to attain critical mass.