Non-Review Reviews | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: The Monuments Men

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Darren

If you tried to take an Indiana Jones film and turn it into a meditation on the scale and conflict of the Second World War, you would end up with The Monuments Men. That is to say, if you sucked all the fun out of it while trying to balance a pulpy tone with a more weighty reflection on the cultural responsibilities that came with winning the Second World War. The movie is just as tone deaf and ill-judged as that description seems to imply – having a lot of clever things to say, but never being quite sure how to say them.

There is a good film to be found in The Monuments Men, if one looks hard enough. One can imagine writer, director and actor George Clooney chipping away at the story trying to find that good movie, like one of those artists whose work was rescued by this band of merry men. You get a sense that Clooney can see the angel in here somewhere; he’s just not sure how to set it free.

The art of the chase…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: america, george clooney, history, nazis, non-review review, review, second world war, the monuments men, world war ii | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Lego Movie

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Darren

The Lego Movie is – as one might expect – a wonderfully well-constructed family film. Following a construction worker repeatedly described as “normal” or “average” – but, one colleague hastens to add, “not normal like us” – named Emmet, the movie is structured as a conventional “special one” narrative. However, veteran directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller stir things up just enough to keep it interesting.

With a wry sense of humour and an acute awareness of the clichés of a typical “hero’s journey” narrative, Lord and Miller have actually managed to tap into the core essence of Lego – if a massive multi-platform brand name empire can be distilled to a “core essence.” It’s a story about the magic of playing with toys and the necessity of throwing away the instructions every once in a while.

The ensemble fits together perfectly…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: batman, christopher miller, creativity, green lantern, Lego, non-review review, phil lord, review, the lego movie, Warner Brothers | 13 Comments »

Non-Review Review: RoboCop (2014)

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Darren

José Padilha’s RoboCop reboot is much better than the lame duck attempt to adapt Total Recall a few years back. It’s a functional action film, structured well enough to stand on its own two feet as a science-fiction thriller. There are the obligatory explosions and CGI, but there’s also a clear enough story populated by reasonably well-drawn characters with just the faintest hint of social commentary at the core. It is solid and functional on its own terms, even if it suffers in comparison to its source material.

Robocop 2.0…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, gary oldman, José Padilha, michael keaton, non-review review, Paul Verhoeven, r eview, reboot, RoboCop | 8 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Armstrong Lie

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Darren

The Armstrong Lie is about a lot of things. It’s nominally about Lance Armstrong’s attempted come back in 2009, and then about how it was all one big lie once the doping allegations became impossible for the athlete to deny. Those are, in a way, the least interesting aspects of Alex Gibney’s documentary. Instead, the film works best as an exploration of power and vested interest, as well as an exploration of narrative and how that narrative is manipulated and shaped to suit agendas.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Alex Gibney, armstrong, bikes, cheat, culture, cycling, dope, doping, drugs, lance armstrong, the armstrong lie, tour de france, UCI | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Mr. Peabody & Sherman

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Darren

Mr. Peabody & Sherman is solid family entertainment. Too scattershot and inconsistent to really rank among the best of the Dreamworks animated feature films, it does benefit from an endearing energy and momentum – as well as a charming central performance from Ty Burrell as the eponymous super-inventor dog genius. It’s perfectly inoffensive fun that manages to get quite a few laughs, even if it doesn’t tug the heart strings quite as well as it might want to.

A dog and his boy…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: animation, doctor who, dreamworks, film, mister peabody, Movie, mr. peabody, mr. peabody and sherman, mr. peaboyd & sherman, non-review review, review, sherman, time travel | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Inside Llewyn Davis

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Darren

Inside Llewyn Davis is great examination of a singer drifting through American music scene in the sixties, starting in Greenwich before embarking on a cross-country tour and then ending up right back where he started.

One of the nicer cinematic tricks employed by the Coen Brothers is a delightful sense of deja vu at the end of the movie. There’s a step backwards in time towards the start of the film, but also a sense that it’s so subtle you might be forgiven for missing it. After all, it doesn’t matter too much. The eponymous Llewyn Davis is an artist caught in a particular groove, stuck on repeat; despite his protestations to the contrary, he is a performing monkey who ultimately only knows one or two numbers that seem to resonate with the audience.

Inside Llewyn Davis is a melancholy examination of personal and professional failure, delivered in the Coens’ trademark tragicomic style. There’s a sense that the world itself has a cruel sense of humour, structuring a joke at the expense of Llewyn. The film doesn’t rank among the Coen Brothers’ best work, and it’s certainly not an instant classic, feeling too disconnected and occasionally too cynical to rank with with the best of their output. At the same time, a middle-tier Coen Brothers’ film is still well worth a look.

Sing when you’re winning…
… or when you’re not…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Beat Generation, folk music, inside llewyn davis, Justin Timberlake, Movie, non-review review, Oscar Isaac, please mr. kennedy, review, the coen brothers | 5 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Wolf of Wall Street

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Darren

In 1987, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street was arguably too subtle in its criticisms of the Wall Street mentality – the philosophy that “greed, for lack of a better word, is good” or that enough can never really enough. After all, the film apparently inspired a whole generation of stock brokers and investment managers, with quite a few aspiring to be their generation’s Gordon Gekko – when the movie’s central point was that Gekko was hardly an idol to worship.

This would seem to explain the rationale of Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, a film that makes Stone’s brutal evisceration of Wall Street excess seem positively mild-mannered. Indeed, the film all but directly acknowledges this fact in an early scene where a “hatchet job” of an article from Forbes (the same article that would lend Belfort his sobriquet “Wolfie!”) prompts a massive upsurge in job applications for Belfort’s Stratton Oakmont.

The money shot…

So, understanding the need to go a bit bigger and larger, The Wolf of Wall Street introduces us to its protagonist, Jordan Belfort, snorting cocaine out of the bodily orifices of a prostitute, and yet somehow descends deeper and deeper into acts of debauchery and excess. It’s an unrelenting and energetic film, that is exhausting and exhilarating. It’s less of a structured story and more a three-hour laundry-list of depravity.

While the last hour of the film (the inevitable “it all comes tumbling down… or does it?” act) can’t maintain the forward moment that make the first two so exhilarating, The Wolf of Wall Street remains proof that Scorsese is an incredible film maker with an almost impossible vigour and enthusiasm for the medium.

Drinking it in…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: corruption, decay, drugs, film, films, jordan belford, Jordan Belfort, leo, Leonardo diCaprio, martin scorsese, Matthew McConaughey, money, Movie, Movies, non-review review, review, sex, vice, Wall Street, Wolf of Wall Street, wolfie | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Devil’s Due

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Darren

The single biggest problem with Devil’s Due is that it’s boring.

There are a lot of other flaws. It’s really creepily xenophobic. It has little interest in the female character carrying this baby. It is completely uninterested in the “found footage” thing, but still commits to using it. It is really just a bunch of clichés that we’ve seen done much better elsewhere. Its protagonists rank incredibly low on the intelligence scale for horror movies, which sets a pretty low baseline to begin with.

However, the most frustrating flaw with this reproductive horror is the fact that it’s just deathly dull.

The belly of the beast…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: antichrist, body horror, devil's due, film, horror, Movie, non-review review, pregnancy, reproductive horror, review, Satan | 5 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Last Vegas

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Darren

Last Vegas is a curious blend. On a purely practical level, it’s a genre hybrid that was bound to happen. Audiences love the “boys behaving badly” narratives that have been revitalised by The Hangover; indeed, that unlikely hit was popular enough to spawn a trilogy. Recent years have also seen audiences flock to films involving older performers, the cynically-described “grey dollar” that turned The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel into such a runaway success, but has been bubbling away in the background with films like Red or The Bucket List.

So, from a studio’s perspective, combining these two successful genres was a bit of a no-brainer. However, the two genres are also somewhat opposed to one another. The Hangover and its string of imitators pride themselves on their immaturity and their irreverence. There’s nothing that is off limits or out-of-bounds to those reckless young turks, no sacred cows that can’t be slaughtered, no sense of good taste that can’t be ignored completely in pursuit of the next laugh.

In contrast, films banking on elderly stars to draw aging audiences are built around reverence. Isn’t it nice to have films that don’t marginalise and sideline elderly performers? Isn’t it great to give people like Morgan Freeman or Robert DeNiro their due? In a way, the genre is built around reverence.

That puts Last Vegas in a very weird place, where it’s constantly trying to go far enough that it can pass as an irreverent “boys on vacation” comedy, but also trying to remain courteous enough and respectful enough of its leads that it won’t alienate viewers who just want to hang out with Douglas, DeNiro, Freeman and Kline. The result is predictably unsatisfying.

Putting their cards on the table…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Delivery Man

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Darren

Delivery Man works surprisingly well. Like something of a throwback to the nineties “overgrown manchild” comedy about slackers honestly trying to pull their lives together, Vince Vaughn’s latest effort is disarmingly sincere. It isn’t plotted particularly well, and there are points where Delivery Man threatens to unspool if you think about it too much, but this adaptation of Canadian comedy Starbuck has its heart in the right place and manages to deliver a nice sentimental comedy without every becoming overwrought or overly earnest.