non-review review | 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: 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: 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.

Cue a tonne of “who’s your daddy?” jokes…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: comedy, delivery man, fatherhood, films, Movies, non-review review, paternity, review, Vince Vaughn | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Fifth Estate

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Darren

The ink is still fresh on The Fifth Estate, although perhaps that is too outdated a metaphor. The code is yet to be debugged might be more appropriate. History has yet to really decide what it will make of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Cyber freedom fighters, the internet generation’s Woodward and Burnstein? Or reckless and disconnected kids failing to realise that writing on screen can have very real consequences? “Editing reflects bias,” we’re reminded early in the film, perhaps a concession that that the movie can’t get the necessary distance to offer a definitive (or even especially nuanced) take on Assange and his revolution.

The Fifth Estate comes down quite hard against Assange, essentially reducing Benedict Cumberbatch’s white-haired technological genius to something like a Bond villain. Director Bill Condon struggles to make typing code look sexy with laboured metaphors. And yet, despite that, there’s a willingness here to engage with something big and bold and important, however clumsily the script grapples with the implications of Wikileaks.

The result is something far more compelling that the dire Diana. Diana was a film so close to its subject that it couldn’t muster any enthusiasm or offer anything approaching a challenging opinion. The Fifth Estate is too close to its subject matter, and it clumsily stumbles into obvious bias and slant, but it’s still an intriguing attempt to parse a new media that it seems Hollywood doesn’t really understand.

He’s Assange one, that one…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Bill Condon, contemporary, film, Julian Assange, Movies, non-review review, review, the fifth estate, thriller politics, Wikileaks | 5 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Star Trek (2009)

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Darren

This August, to celebrate the upcoming release of Star Trek: Into Darkness on DVD and blu ray, we’re taking a look at the Star Trek movies featuring the original cast. Movie reviews are every Tuesday and Thursday.

Star Trek was not in a healthy place at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The last film, Star Trek: Nemesis, had been box office poison – partially due to the terrible script and direction, and partially due to the monumentally stupid decision of opening it during a winter season including The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Die Another Day.

On television, things hadn’t been much brighter. Ratings had been in decline since Star Trek: Voyager hit the air, and Star Trek: Enterprise went through both a re-tool and a creative shift before becoming the first Star Trek television show since the eighties to be cancelled before running a full seven seasons. Even the most ardent Star Trek fan would have to concede that the franchise did not appear to have a bright future at that point in time.

And yet, against all odds and despite all the goodwill the franchise had lost, JJ Abrams and Paramount managed to reinject both an energy and a vitality into the film, producing one of the best blockbusters of the decade.