non-review review | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists (Band of Misfits)

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Darren

This review was embargoed until 14th March.

There’s a lot of charm to The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (or Band of Misfits, if you’re so inclined). Aardman Animation might be best known for their distinctive (and beautiful) claymation style, but the studio also has some very sharp writers providing great concepts, ideas and scripts for their madcap films. Pirates! is no different, taking a fairly conventional setting with a fairly conventional central moral, and just throwing absolutely everything against the wall. The result is a genuinely endearing and more-than-a-little madcap family adventure.

A cut above the rest?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Aardman Animation, arts, Ashley Jensen, brendan gleeson, Charles Darwin, Clay animation, david tennant, film, Hugh Grant, Misfits, Movie, non-review review, Pirate Captain, pirates, review, Russell Tovey, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, Wallace & Gromit | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: We Bought a Zoo

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Darren

The biggest problem facing We Bought a Zoo is that it can’t ever decide how serious a family drama it wants to be. It follows a family recovering from the loss of their mother by purchasing a zoo and attempting to renovate it, and it never finds a healthy balance between the shamelessly upbeat montage-set-to-classic-pop “live your crazy dreams!” feel-good fun and the heavier subject of a family finding piece. The result is a movie that often feels a little toosweet and a little too earnest at the same time, and never manages to mix the two tones with a great deal of success.

Not quite out of the park...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Cameron Crowe, Crowe, drama, Elle Fanning, family, film, films, Jónsi, Jerry Maguire, matt damon, Movies, non-review review, review, scarlett johansson, Thomas Haden Church, We Bought a Zoo, Zoology | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: John Carter

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Darren

I really enjoyed John Carter for what it was. In a way, the movie feels quite a bit like its lead character, a Confederate soldier yanked off Earth and dumped in another very strange setting. This movie feels like a seventies or eighties science-fiction epic, mercilessly plucked from the era of pulpy high-tech fantasy and transposed to a more cynical modern time. Whether or not you will enjoy John Carter will depend entirely on your taste for big-budget science-fiction epics. Those who favour a wry and self-aware approach to their wild interplanetary adventures will likely go home unsatisfied. However, those who can embrace an earnest and straight-faced adaptation of a science-fiction classic will find much to enjoy. You can guess which camp I fell into, even if I could acknowledge the movie’s significant shortcomings.

Warlord of Mars...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Andrew Stanton, Confederate States Army, david lynch, Earth, Edgar Rice Burrough, Edgar Rice Burroughs, film, george lucas, hollywood, james cameron, John Carter, john carter of mars, mark strong, Michael Giacchino, Movie, non-review review, Princess of Mars, r eview, science fiction, Taylor Kitsch, The Walt Disney Company | 11 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Darren

While Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters might get a little bit too crazy and twisty in its final third, but it’s a brilliantly dark Norwegian thriller/comedy, headlined with considerable style by Aksel Hennie as corporate recruitment expert Roger Brown, a sleazy yuppie living well beyond his means to keep his wife in the style two which she has become accustomed. As the movie puts Brown through a sequence of painful and humiliating encounters, it is consistently entertaining, managing to walk the fine line between making sure we dislike Roger enough to be amused by his misfortune, but invested enough that we want to see the little (“1.68 metres”) bugger manage to escape the movie relatively intact.

Got milk?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Aksel Hennie, arts, Brown, film, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Harry Hole, jameson dublin international film festival, Jo Nesbø, Morten Tyldum, Movie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, non-review review, review, Roger, Roger Brown, Stieg Larsson, United States, Yellow Bird | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Project X

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Darren

Project X is a mess, but it’s a high-octane and energetic mess, with an incredible youthful exuberance and a desire to throw anything it can at the wall to see if it sticks. Though it starts out a bit slow, it accelerates pretty quickly, with the film managing to hold itself together as the party on-screen starts to fall apart. The best way to describe Project X might be to define it as Superbad‘s hyper-active, less focused, more crass, more direct and less sweet younger brother. It lacks the heart that defined that other recent coming-of-age teenage comedy, but it more than makes up for its relative shallowness with an enthusiasm that’s infectious and hard to resist.

Razing the roof...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: art, Arts and Entertainment, Australia, business, comedy, Disc jockey, Document review, film, House Party, Movie, Nima Nourizadeh, non-review review, Project X, Protagonist, review, Shopping, Superbad, Thomas Mann, Todd Phillips | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Courage (Wymyk)

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012.

Courage is a fascinating little Polish film, with an interesting dramatic hook. Director Greg Zglinski offers a searing portrait of masculinity and impotence in the twenty-first century, where ever moment and action and decision seems to be documented for future use – our private failures of judgment ultimately become public spectacles, and in this era of globalisation and instant media connections, it’s impossible to escape the consequences of one bad split-second decision. While Zglinski’s film might overstay even its relatively short runtime, it does raise some interesting and challenging ideas about heroism in the twenty-first century.

Oh, brother!

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Academy Award, Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Agnieszka Holland, art, arts, Cinema of Poland, Courage, dublin, Europa, film, Filmmaking, Florida, Fred, In the Sewers of Lvov: A Heroic Story of Survival from the Holocaust, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012, Jerzy, Jews, Movie, Movies, non-review review, politics, review, United States | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Baraka

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012. It will be getting a 20th anniversary re-release this year.

Released in 1992, it’s easy to consider Baraka as something of a spiritual successor to Koyaanisqatsi, a film which gave birth to an entire subgenre of non-narrative feature films designed to offer us insight into the working of our planet. It’s a natural comparison, as director Ron Ficke served as director of photography on that monumental film, and he clearly owes a debt to Godfrey Reggio’s masterpiece. However, I think there’s a substantive difference between how the two directors approach their subject matter, and the end result. While Reggio offers a more fascinating study of large-scale systems, Fricke manages a strange intimacy amidst his vast scale – there’s something considerably more human to Baraka, and I think that comfortably sets the movie apart. It looks as good as it did on initial release twenty years ago, and it still packs as much punch – even if it never looks quite as sharp as its sequel, Samsara.

Crazy world...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Baraka, baraka (film), baraka (movie), Calcutta, film, Fricke, godfrey reggio, india, iraq, Kolkata, Koyaanisqatsi, Movie, non-review review, philip glass, Reggio, review, Ron Fricke, Samsara, subway, Tribal art | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: This Means War

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Darren

It’s hard to find anything redeeming in McG’s This Means War, a romantic comedy that attempts to court the male demographic with promises of car chases and explosions and action sequences. However, the movie has some rather unpleasant undertones as it devolves into a competition between two male friends to see who can effectively trick a beautiful young woman into falling in love with them. Interestingly, the movie is primarily about these two guys and their relationship, with the (supposed) object of their affection serving as a glorified prop.

War and pieces...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Charlie, chris pine, film, Heinrich, hollywood, mcg, Movie, non-review review, Reese Witherspoon, review, Romantic comedy film, This Means War, This Means War (movie), This Means War 9film), Til Schweiger, tom hardy, USA PATRIOT Act, valentine's day | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: This Must Be The Place

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012. It was the second “surprise” film.

This Must Be The Place is a film that has several interesting components, but keeps them so thoroughly isolated from one another through almost deft use of road movie clichés that nothing ever clicks. Paolo Sorrentino hasn’t so much made a movie as he has stapled a bunch of holiday snapshots together, treating us to a holiday slideshow full of half-finished anecdotes, banal details and no real sense of structure. That’s not to say that there aren’t moments of brilliance scattered through the over-long and self-indulgent mess of a film, but the fact is they can’t add enough flavour to salvage the film.

Here's lookin' at you, punk...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: art, David Byrne, dublin, film, Film festival, France McDormand, Harry Dean Stanton, Ireland, Irish Film Board, jameson dublin international film festival, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012, Movie, non-review review, Paolo Sorrentino, review, sean penn, This Must be the place (film), this must be the place (movie), titanic, United States | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Raid (Redemption)

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012.

I am not a fan of absolutes. They generally scare me, because they leave so little room for error. With that in mind, I have two things to say about Gareth Evans’ The Raid, the first film to pick up both the Dublin Film Critics’ Circle award for best film and the Jameson International Film Festival’s Audience Award. Put simply, The Raid is the best action movie I have seen in years. The second is that watching it in a cinema with hundreds of film fans feeling the exact same thing might be one of the best movie-going experiences of my life.

That’s a pretty big deal.