Let the Bullets Fly

Waking up early to see a bad film is probably one of the biggest punishment that one can get, and unfortunately I got punished like this for nothing. Although I have never liked westerns, comedies or I’m not a great fan of Chinese cinema, I have decided to wake up at 7am to see Let the Bullets Fly during this year’s London Film Festival. I was very disappointed. Mainly I was disappointed with the fact that although the seats in NFT1 at BFI are much more comfortable than my bed in my own bedroom, the sound was so loud in the film that I simply could not get any sleep. Instead I was made to follow this pointlessly complex plot presented in the smallest, white subtitles often on the white background. Throughout the whole film, I was just sitting there thinking that at least I will have something to write about, especially if it’s a bad film, but the problem is Let the Bullets Fly is a bad, but horribly boring film. Because it was really boring, I did not focus on it much so I cannot really complain about anything specific because I have no specific knowledge about what was happening. I could read the description on IMDB, but I don’t think I really care to discuss this film as much. Let’s get some things straight though, because some notes have been taken during this screening, so I can at least tell you why you should not waste your time on it. And boy was it a waste of time...

I cannot really tell you what Let the Bullets Fly is about, because it involves too much talking in white letters on the white background and because of the most background stories ever told, including political issues that one’s brain does not consume easily when they are served with flying trains and sliced stomachs. The combination of the latter is what really makes Let the Bullets Fly so surprisingly boring, I think. If it was a sort of political western (if something like this can even function) I would be fine, or if at least it was a political comedy. But boring us to death with politics and then once in a while present us with a nice action sequences or incredibly dark and gore humour, creates an uneatable mixture. I could take one or another but not both at the same time. Like the rest of the audience I expected The Good, The Bad and The Weird and got some bad CGI and much too long monologues instead. The lack of an individual character does not help the film. You can say something about three characters in the movie, but it is not enough to make their vivid image. They are either good or bad, and the rest of the cast just stands or fights in the background.

I might have a different cinematic sensitivity from Chinese audience, but to me Let the Bullets fly does not fulfill its promised function. It dragged on for ages and not one scene’s finale satisfied me. Please LFF, keep the film baddies for the later hours. I hate the feeling of disappointment so early in the morning.

2/10

Carnage

From trendsetter of filmmaking Polanski has turned into movie making machine. His technically perfect films are deprived of humanity and small imperfections which make a film interesting, unique and innovative. But he just won't break the rules of directing 101 it seems.

At some point in the film, Christoph Waltz says that he believes in god of carnage. But how can we believe in real carnage if it is presented in such a conservatively boring way? Don't get me wrong, the film is not boring; it is light and funny, a little charming and definitely well performed, however, the way it is all shot is simply boring. There is nothing edgy or risky about Polanski's direction. The actors (and he got some god damn good actors) walk around as if they were on theatre stage and often seem to have as much knowledge about filling the screen space or interacting with each other and the props around them as a theatre club student.

Carnage is based on the play and I will never understand what has tempted Polanski to turn it into a movie. Even working with the writer of the play did not help it. It even might have made it more theatre like. Carnage is a story of four parents (two couples) who meet after their sons get into a fight (or rather one hits the other after being called names). Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly (who is stalking me) play the parents of a suppose victim, and Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet try to protect their supposedly guilty son. There is lots of 'ifs' in Polanski's film, but he manages to solve them nicely and prioriotises what really keeps our interest. Thus from the boys' fighting we go to marriage problems and personal tragedies. Every one of the actors pulls their performances well, however, the characters they play are again a very stereotypical choices for these actors. John C. Reilly plays a good, fun to be with husband and father who is willing to compromise, although his jokes might hurt some; Jodie Foster is a defensive mother who cares for human rights and world peace and even when she breaks down, she still cries about African babies starving; Kate Winslet is a successful and confident woman who hides her roughness under romanticism; and Christoph Waltz is an intelligent asshole. What a shocker.

The main problem with Carnage is that it fully relies on the performances, however, no performance can make an averagely written film good. It will still remain just average. The jokes are good, but they are too repetitive; the lines are well delivered but they simply sound written. The only thing missing in Carnage is the theatre stage. It works, but only in a theatre.

It might be the matter of age, laziness or being too confident. but it seems like Polanski has lost the power to change the cinema. He sticks to the rules in the world where we want to break the rules. Overall, Carnage is pleasurable to watch but a forgettable film.

6/10

We Need to Talk About Kevin (and about Tilda)

With her almost lizardy face, almond shaped eyes, doll like paleness and boyish expressions, Tilda Swinton is simply hypnotising type of beauty. And so is her performance in the almost perfect adaptation of Lionel Shriver's disturbing novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Here, Kevin is eating his sister's eye

This book is not for everyone, as so is not the film, however, Lynne Ramsay seems to have exactly the same sensitivity as the author of the novel. It's almost scary how with gentle perfection she manages to reflect the atmosphere of the book. Her Kevin speaks with the sentences that could have easily been written by Shriver; he is inhumanly conscious and intelligent, just as he is in the book. Her Eva is my Eva too. Tilda Swinton is casted so perfectly that it literally took my breath away seeing her on screen. She is the strong, ambitious mother of a monster whose life has been broken, but never completely destroyed by the massive murder committed by her son, Kevin. Although Ramsay is often very ascetic when it comes to showing the story on the screen; the events are reflected on Eva's face rather than showed directly to us; she still manages to persuade us that Kevin cannot be stopped, even as a baby.

This atmosphere of the inevitable combined with the intelligent black humour makes this dark story disturbingly entertaining. Ramsay uses symbols, yet they are so subtle that We Need to Talk About Kevin can be watched without any horrible pretentious preparations; it is light enough for the audience not familiar with London Film Festival's programme as well as challenging enough for a critic. There is a lightness in making the weirdness of this seemingly simple story.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is the first film during this year's London Fil Festival that did not disappoint me. It was everything I expected plus a little more. And if you don't think this review is persuasive enough, then I beg you, see this film and write one yourselves.

8/10

Real Steel

Omg, where do I even start...
Real Steel might have been one of the worst movies, if not the worst (well, there was Soul Surfer...) of the year. It has big machines, annoying child, Hugh Jackman as an asshole father and no point of existence whatsoever. I have no idea why this film was made, because having a budget like this and a big ass robot, I can think of so many other scripts that would work better than Reel Steal. I don't even have to think about them, to be honest, because Cracked.com has already done so:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-better-uses-giant-robot-from-real-steel/

                   There are also ways in which you should never use robots, you creep


In Reel Steel, Hugh Jackman is a robot trainer of some sort and spends his life participating in robot vs bull fights as well as being a neglectful father to his only son that to be honest, I would myself neglect for being the most annoying child in the history of cinema. Of course he is made to spend a summer with his son and obviously their relationship changes rapidly as soon as Hugh Jackman discovers the boy's talent. And what is it exactly? The fact that the boy is able to restore an old generation robot? The fact that just by playing video games he is able to control the big machine? The fact that he is able to communicate with the robot? Or the fact that he is inhumanly powerful and is able to drag himself a full three ton heavy robot for a very long distance up the hill, in the middle of the night after almost losing his life?

If you think, these were impressive, you don't know anything about impressive. According to both Max's father and his girlfriend as well as the whole robot fighting audience, the most amazing thing about Max is his
annoying dance.

It's been a long time since I've seen something THAT irritating. Congratulations, movie

After discovering that his son is so good at robot dancing (literally), Hugh Jackman decides to give him a chance at the real competition, where some redneck punk guys get overexcited about beating some ten year old kid's ass. Although Max's robot is old, he manages to win all the fights up to the point where he meets Zeus- the ultimate robot killing machine that no robot in the entire world has ever beaten. It is designed by a hot japanese guy and run by a hot russian girl. And you probably have guessed, who wins this fight...

It is not that I can only be entertained by an emotionally deep film, because I have to admit- I like robots. I loved Terminator, I liked Transformers (I risk loosing my press pass by making this declaration, I'm aware of this), I like I Robot, I liked half of the A.I. I like brainless entertainment very often and sometimes it is enough to show me some badass special effects (Mr. Cameron) in order to make me a happy bunny. But this happy bunny can turn into a Monty Python bunny when watching so called movie about a friendship and love and forgiveness where the only persuasive character is dr pepper. By the way, has anyone noticed how many dr peppers there are in the entire film? I haven't seen that many in tescos and it's a large tescos I live next to. And it's not just doctor pepper that they put everywhere. Real Steel seems like it's trying to beat Michael Bay's record of the amount of product placement in one scene. And it works. I will never drink Dr Pepper thanks to it.

Reel Steel 1/10

Before I publish my review of Real Steel

Let me for just one more moment enjoy myself with this funny Modern Family clip.

OMG

This is the greatest...

What Am I Missing Today?

I've never wanted to complain about my private life struggles, but fuck it, I have nothing to lose at this point (meaning: no audience to lose haha)...So basically, London Film Festival has now officially started and I have written maybe six or less articles about the films, because I've been looking for a flat. So while everyone is watching 360 today in the morning, I'm calling rude agents at the estate agencies while desperately learning London's tube map by heart. So please, sympathise with me.
I bet 360 was an outstanding film, but this I will hear from other nasty bloggers who have managed to see it. Let us see what else have I missed out today:

1. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1827512/
The Kid with a Bike
What do I think I would rate it? Well, it might be a slightly depressing, but in a french, quirky way film, so I think it would be at least 6/10, but if shown after a good film, it might have even moved my heart to mark it 8/10. Will I ever find out?

2. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1456472/
We Have a Pope
Awwwwwwww it has a polish actor in it (Jerzy Sztuhr), so now I will feel like a traitor to my own country. Although topically it has been analysed much too many times, I would still see it, fuck it, after missing out for so long, I would see all the films today.

3. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1658820/
Sket
Almost everything, I meant. I would have a lunch while this new british wave disappointment lasts...

4. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2050561/
Louise Wimmer
film so hipster that it doesn't even have a synopsis on IMDB. And I would go and see it too, wy not.

Unfortunately, I won't see any of them. I will see Snowtown tomorrow though and hope I won't hear from others how good 360 was.
You lucky bastards....

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Even if I used to be, I'm not anymore, thanks to this film. I could have even said that it might be the first horror movie that does not fulfil its function at all and instead, it does the opposite. The trailer I have to say was good. The moment from the trailer put in the context of the whole film? Well, not so much anymore...

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is a remake of a film I haven't seen myself so you cannot blame me for comparing the two version and thus favorising the latter. I also like Guillermo del Toro as a writer and I believe he is creating a new subgenre of horror movies which is dedicated to a very specific target audience- a mentally grown up eleven year olds. I don't know how he manages to sell so well, especially when I never see a mature eleven year old, but it seems to be working and everyone loves his films. Or maybe we love them because they are in Spanish. Whichever it is, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark seems to fail in every aspect that his other films succeed. So who takes the blame first?

Let's start with the least experienced one and that is the director of the movie himself- Troy Nixey. Troy has done a short film before and now suddenly has been trusted with a pretty tough job to do- scaring children who are too old to be afraid of a monster under the bed (although can one really stop being afraid of it?) but not old enough to consume naked bodies in gore scenes. Troy Nixey is definitely trying to satisfy his younger audience. We follow the steps of Sally, played by surprisingly good Bailee Madison and throughout the whole film he presents us with the world as seen by this girl. As a director, he lets her guide us through the old buildings and magical gardens and the scenes in which we focus on Sally, the film manages to keep us interested. The problem appears when we see other characters and Sally interacting with them.

Although I am young enough to still be able to identify and emphasise with children characters in films, however, the girl from Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is one of these kids I have never been or seen. She comes from an obviously wealthy environment and can afford to spend her whole days playing around not worrying about anything. Her parents treat her like an adult but don't give her any responsibilities at the same time. She has this weird independence that I bet no other children apart from "del Toro's children" experience. However unpersuasive this character is, it is only when Sally is shown in interaction with others that we really see how impossible her existence is. Her father literally does not care about her at all, however, she still prefers him to any other people in her life. She is jealous of father's new girlfriend, but at the end of the film easily changes her attitude and in the most terrifying circumstances she learns about love, death and sacrifice, however, this experience does not leave her traumatised. I'm sorry but this is a girl I will never be able to identify with.

Troy Nixey struggles with storytelling, especially when the plot is developed by showing Katie Holmes' and Guy Pearce's characters. The shots are completely random in these scenes and it seems like the director was bored with them himself and decided to leave both of them in front of the camera and just went for lunch. There is no chemistry between the two of them and neither of their performances is even satisfying. Although the film is shot on a wonderful location, Troy Nixey seems to have no idea how to use its potential.

The special effects are hugely disappointing. I won't reveal what really lies in the dark, because before it is shown, the film builds very nicely, so I let you enjoy it yourself. Both Pan's Labyrinth and the Orphanage (and I'm mentioning these two films because not only are they produced by Guillermo del Toro but also they seem to belong to the same subgenre) have managed to hypnotise us with creep, but magical atmosphere. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark simply lacks the magic. It is filmed in a beautiful location, however completely ignored by the makers. It is supported by the amazing soundtrack which will remain underrated because of the picture it accompanies.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is a big disappointment. I would recommend just watching the trailer and imagining what this film could have been life if it only was in Spanish...