non-review review | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Due Date

Posted on November 11, 2010 by Darren

I have to admit that I quite enjoyed Due Date. It’s a straight-forward comedy road movie – nothing more, nothing less. It’s the standard template: two unlikely comrades find themselves embarking on a cross-country journey where they learn a lot about each other and themselves. As such, Due Date is the younger sibling of films like Trains, Planes and Automobiles or Midnight Run – it’s also a genre which hasn’t, to be honest, been played entirely straight in quite some time. Sure, there have been variations on theme – Little Miss Sunshine, for example, played the road movie with far more subversive comedy; Get Him to the Greek was this concept with rock stars. As such, perhaps the simplicity of Due Date is part of the appeal – it’s a tried and tested formula, so why tinker with it?

What does Robert Downey Jr. bring to the table?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Big Lebowski, Due Date, film, Hangover, little miss sunshine, Movies, non-review review, planes trains and automobiles, review, robert downey jr, Todd Phillips, Zach Galifianakis | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Bullitt

Posted on November 11, 2010 by Darren

Let’s be honest. You’re just here for the car chase. You know the car chase. It must be really tough being a movie with an iconic sequence located about halfway through – perhaps that’s because you are inevitably built up through years of pop culture expectation. Don’t get me wrong, the central chase sequence is absolutely superb – to this day it remains one of the most gripping sequences committed to film – but I was perhaps expecting a bit more from the film that surrounds it. Bullitt is a fairly decent cop movie which just so happens to feature some celluloid magic in the middle.

A speeding bullitt...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Bullitt, Car chase, classic, Dirty Harry, film, Movies, non-review review, review, san francisco, steve mcqueen | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Mission Impossible II

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Darren

The single best description of this movie I have ever read was that it was “a two-hour long shaving commercial.”

I hope that thing has Cruise control...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Dougray Scott, ethan hunt, GoldenEye, imf, john woo, mission: impossible, Mission: Impossible II, non-review review, review, spies, Thandie Newton, tom cruise | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Master and Commander – The Far Side of the World

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Darren

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a movie that, like Gladiator before it, finds a lot of appeal in resurrecting a genre that was pretty much dead in cinema. As such, despite being well-produced and well-acted, the core of the movie is one of nostalgia – we’ve all seen those classic tales of men at war on the oceans, what might be termed swashbuckling sea-faring adventures. However, unlike Russell Crowe’s earlier film, Peter Weir’s attempt to revive the men-at-sea adventure movie never quite landed with the public – to the point that the genre hasn’t really seen a resurgence, nor has a sequel been produced. Which, to be honest, is a bit of shame. Master and Commander isn’t quite as powerful an experience as it could be, but it is – like the ship on which it is set – well built and sturdy.

It's long and hard and filled with... never mind...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: A Beautiful Mind, films, gladiator, Jim Sturgess, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Movies, non-review review, nostalgia, paul bettany, Peter Weir, review, romanticism, russell crowe, Way Back | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Sunshine

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Darren

Sunshine is a science-fiction movie. Well, duh, you proclaim, looking at the screenshots or having read the plot synopsis, it’s about a bunch of people in space flying to the sun. Of course it’s science-fiction! It’s hardly a comedy or musical! However, I’m talking about something more essential than its setting or its superficial elements. Although the story of a bunch of astronauts planning to reignite the dying star at the centre of our solar system may distract you, Sunshine works so well because it grabs the sorts of philosophical ideas at the heart of the best science-fiction: it’s an exploration of the conflict between the rational and the irrational, the logical and the emotional and the place of man and his understanding of the world around him. It’s movie that is far smarter than it pretends to be.

Going for gold...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 28 days later, chris evens, Cillian Murphy, cliff curtis, danny boyle, faith, Hiroyuki Sanada, icarus, ideas, John Murphy, mankind, mark strong, michelle yeoh, non-review review, religion, review, sci-fi, science, science fiction, slumdog millionaire, Sun, sunshine, the sun, the surface of the sun | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Darren

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a decently-made little thriller. It’s interesting that David Fincher has been selected to helm the inevitable English-language remake of the film, as it feels like a spiritual companion to se7en. While that Fincher thriller concerned itself with a broken world populated with seven flavours of deadly sin, this Swedish film is only really interested in one. It’s a brutal commentary on what it suggests is a harsh and repressively misogynistic society, one that victimises and commoditises women. However, it veers a little bit too far into sensationalist territory – fixated on the idea that men in positions of authority are inevitably sexual sadists – and its contents make for excedingly grim viewing.

Never quite gripping...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Cinema of Sweden, david fincher, film, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander, Män som hatar kvinnor, Mikael Blomkvist, Movies, Nazism, non-review review, review, Rooney Mara, Stieg Larsson | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Darren

I never grew up with G.I. Joe. For me it was Batman: The Animated Series or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. To me, this franchise was just a bunch of generic toy soldiers – in fact, I didn’t even know that they had separate names or defining characteristics. So I come to this movie without a sense of nostalgia or a familiarity with the core product. So, Stephen Sommers’ adaptation of the popular multi-media franchise to the big screen is my first major exposure to the product, and it left me feeling like I’d spent two hours watching a guy playing with toys, rather than making a movie. One of the characters even has a “kung-fu grip”.

It's a black-and-white world...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, christopher eccleston, Destro, Empire State Building, film, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kevin J. O'Connor, Movie, non-review review, Norton Internet Security, review, Sienna Miller, stephen sommers, team america: world police, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, United States | 3 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Easy A

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Darren

“Just once I want my life to be like an 80’s movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason,” Olive – our plucky teenage protagonist – moans at one point, before sadly reflecting, “But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my life.” However, her life really isn’t that far off. Easy A recalls, in the best way possible, all those great teenage comedies from the eighties, like The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It isn’t that it’s a generic imitation – it works very well on its own merits, and selling it as a nostalgic trip doesn’t do the movie justice – rather that is displays a genuine understanding about the facts of being a teenager growing up and the way that social interactions work at that age.

Funny, my hairdresser gave me the same advice...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Easy A, Emma Stone, John Hughes, Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell, non-review review, paticia clarkson, review, Scarlet Letter, stanley tucci, teen comedy, the scarlet letter, Thomas Haden Church | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: 28 Weeks Later

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Darren

Welcome to the m0vie blog’s zombie week! It’s a week of zombie-related movie discussions and reviews as we come up to Halloween, to celebrate the launch of Frank Darbont’s The Walking Dead on AMC on Halloween night. So be sure to check back all week, as we’ll be running posts on the living dead.

It’s strange. 28 Days Later felt strangely British, with its almost quaint surroundings and “island fortress” mentality. Filmed in High Definition with an intimate approach, the movie felt somehow more tangible and organic than most of these films, managing a genuine emotional impact that it’s easy to lose sight of in these fantastical narratives – its small scale and quirky design (along with hyper saturation) lent the movie a very distinct feel, the sensation that this was a “guerilla” zombie film – shot in the early morning on abandoned streets rather than closing off sections of town. In contrast, 28 Weeks Later feels a much more managed affair, and a much more conventional one. It’s shot like any other zombie movie, and clearly intended to reach an even wider audience than the original cult hit. It’s a great movie, but one can’t help but get the sensation that the fine polish applied to it undercuts some of the impact.