Beautiful Lies: Movie Review

Beautiful Lies: Movie Review

Beautiful Lies
Rating: 6/10
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila
Director: Pierre Salvadon
Amelie's Tautou stars as Emilie in this French romantic comedy about little white lies.
Emilie is a partner in a hairdressing business - one day she receives an anonymous love letter from Jean (Bouajila) who works with her. But she dismisses it and carries on with her life.
However, realizing her mother Maddy's yet to recover from her father walking out on them four years ago, she decides to take that letter and retype it, changing the intended addressee and sending it to her depressed mom.
But, that rejuvenates Maddy and sets in motion a chain of events which spirals out into farcical consequences.
Tautou is perfectly fine in the role; one minute all wide eyed and the next haughty and cross; while she has a bit of spark about her, it's only really at the start of this film that you're carried along with the premise. About a third of the way in, it becomes a little too farcical for you to care as the misunderstandings escalate and a somewhat strange situation/ triangle develops between Jean, Maddy and Emilie.

Beautiful Lies is a piece of French fluff; beautifully shot in a bright French town - it has all the breeziness within but is insubstantial and instantly forgettable.

Fright Night: Movie Review

Fright Night: Movie Review

Fright Night
Rating: 8/10
Cast: Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Imogen Poots, David Tennant, Toni Collette, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Director: Craig Gillespie
So it's a remake of the 1985 flick of the same name - and despite the fact you're probably rolling your eyes wondering if Hollywood's run out of ideas, this ain't half bad.
Yelchin is Charley Brewster, who lives in a small suburban settlement just outside Vegas; his mom (Collette) is an estate agent and he's just starting a new relationship with popular girl Amy (Poots) having graduated to the cool kids from a group of geeks he used to hang around with.
One of them, Ed (Mintz-Plasse) believes the third member of their former gang has been taken by a vampire named Jerry (Farrell) who just happens to be Charley's next door neighbour...
And when Ed goes missing and Charley begins to investigate, it transpires there may be a grain of truth in the accusations.
Fright Night is a whole bunch of bloody fangtastic fun.
A good horror these days needs several key ingredients in the mix; a dose of self knowing humour, some genuine scares, spooky atmosphere and some quality acting.
Thankfully, Fright Night has all of that and more.
Colin Farrell pulls a stunningly menacing turn out of the bag as the shifty and frightening neighbour who just wants to get to know his neighbours; Yelchin also impresses having enough presence to make you believe he's just graduated from the geeks to leading man status and David Tennant brings a lizard lounge swagger to the Vegas magician to give him enough charisma on the screen.
To be honest, the 3D format of this film is a little hit and miss - some of it's used to have blood splatter come out of the screen at you and that's a little disappointing. But the FX when the vampires burn up in the sun is stunningly good.

All in all, Fright Night represents a great piece of popcorn entertainment; it's a clever film whose easy mix of occasional tongue in cheek tone and masterfully eeked out tension ensure you're kept on the edge of your seat throughout.

In Time: Movie Review

In Time: Movie Review

In Time
Rating: 5/10
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Vincent Kartheiser
Director: Andrew Niccol
Kiwi director Andrew Niccol returns with this sci-fi film, set sometime a few days after the day after tomorrow.
In this alternative future, people stop aging at 25 and must work to buy themselves more time. A green digital clock counting down on their arm signals how much time they've got left in life - but they have options to work to buy time and can transfer it freely between themselves. With me so far?
It's in this world we meet Justin Timberlake's Will Salas, who lives in the ghettos. When Salas finds himself in a bar one night with a man who's got over a century of time notched up on his arm, Salas ends up saving him from a corrupt gang preying on those who live in the ghetto.
However, the next day, Salas finds the man dead and all the time transferred to him.
Suddenly, the police force of TimeKeepers (including Cillian Murphy's character) is on his tail - and Will heads to New Greenwich where the rich live to try and escape the law and live his life.
There, he meets Amanda Seyfried's Sylvia Weis, the rich girl/spoilt brat who's desperate to get out of her father's clutches so that she can live a little.
However, she hadn't bargained for becoming Will's hostage when he finds himself trapped and with nowhere to run....
It's an intriguing concept and one ripe for sci fi trappings but In Time just falls short of its clever central premise.
The whole feel is starchly pompous at times and utterly silly at others. It's also a mish mash of other films; shades of Logan's Run, elements of Bonnie and Clyde and touches of Robin Hood as Salas robs time from the rich to give to the poor. With lines like "The poor die, but the rich don't live" and "Don't waste my time", there's some heavy handed hammering home of the ideas at play here.
That's some of the problem as the film doesn't quite know what it wants to be. Sure, there are thematic questions running underneath as the ethics of living and dying come up but they're mired in noisy chase scenes and plenty of running that they lose their intelligence too early on. It's a shame that Niccol resorts to car chases to keep the audience engaged when the central conceit is such an interesting one.
Seyfried makes a very sultry wide eyed naïf to begin with and Timberlake is relatively straight as he tries to become an intelligent action hero (which unfortunately he doesn't quite make), but the two just don't mix well and there's very little chemistry on display, making Seyfried's Stockholm Syndrome a little hard to believe in.

Granted there are some good ideas, concepts and designs here- the look and feel particularly of the day after tomorrow works very well - but Kiwi director Niccol doesn't seem to know what ultimately he wants to do with this film, which is a real shame.

The Inbetweeners Movie: Movie Review

The Inbetweeners Movie: Movie Review

The Inbetweeners Movie
Rating: 7/10
Cast: Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley, Blake Harrison
Director: Ben Palmer
From three successful TV series, a movie's born from some very crude loins.
UK comedy series The Inbetweeners centred around 4 teenagers, Jay, Simon, Will and Neil who're obsessed with sex, girls, sex, breasts, sex and even more sex.
In the film spin off from the TV2 show, the quartet have finished school; when Jay's grandfather dies, and Simon's dumped by long term on/off girlfriend Carli, they decide it's time for a lad's holiday away in Crete.
So the four lovably deluded losers head off to the sun and sand in the hope of scoring plenty of ladies and a memorable time.
But things get complicated when Simon finds out Carli's there too and sets out to woo her back; and the rest of the guys find their quest for notches on the bedpost don't quite go according to any sort of plan.
The Inbetweeners Movie is full of sharp one liners, smut and humiliation - and because of that, is in keeping with the TV series, the awkward situations they find themselves in and the characters we've come to know and love.
Of the four lads, it's perhaps Simon Bird's geeky and intellectual loser Will who comes off best in the flick; he's got some great lines and Bird really does bring an extra dimension to the character. Joe Thomas' Simon starts to grate a little as he continues to pine after Carli - so much so that you want to shout at the screen for him to move on; Blake Harrison's Neil has some astonishingly filthy - yet very funny- moments (which sadly can't be discussed here) and James Buckley's deluded Jay is perhaps the weakest of the bunch in terms of story arcs.
But that's the thing with The Inbetweeners - you could always see what was going to happen and while parts of this film may feel a little repetitive, the laughs you get from seeing the delusions of sex obsessed teenagers in action far outweigh the feeling you've seen it all before.

With a healthy smattering of smut and some genuinely laugh out loud and cringeworthy moments, The Inbetweeners Movie is a sign the Brit comedy industry is still in very, very rude health.

One Day: Movie Review

One Day: Movie Review

One Day
Rating: 4/10
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Rafe Spall, Ken Stott, Patricia Clarkson
Director: Lone Scherfig
Based on a tremendously well received book, One Day stars Anne Hathaway as Emma Morley, and Jim Sturgess as Dexter Mayhew.
The pair have just graduated from Edinburgh on July 15th, 1988 and very nearly fall into bed together.
However, they don't quite make it and thus begins a 20 year friendship, charted on screen by following the pair every year on July 15th to find out where they are.
Emma is an idealist; a wannabe writer and working class girl who always seems thwarted in her attempts to achieve greater things, ending up in a relationship with Rafe Spall's terribly dull stand up comic, Ian.
Dex, meanwhile, seems to have it all - a TV career fronting a music show and women, booze and drugs on tap. But unsurprisingly, he's a mess.
Can the pair realise what they truly need has been under their noses for the past 20 years?
One Day is pure romantic fluff drama; some will swoon and fawn over it and others will absolutely hate it.
While the recreation of the relevant decades is brilliantly realised - right down to the music choices which evoke the era within seconds of you hearing them in the background, the main plot device (jumping a year) starts to grate very quickly.
The trouble is that the central conceit makes each visit feel a little like a disjointed vignette and it's hard to really engage with or care about the characters.
Sturgess and Hathaway have little chemistry together - and while Hathaway's attempt at a Northern English accent isn't as bad as you may have read, she certainly doesn't impress as much as perhaps she might. There's some disarming charm in the dialogue and some good one liners but to be honest, you can see where this film is going from the beginning.

Ultimately, One Day is a little polarising; some will adore the true love storyline and tearjerking moments whereas others will simply roll their eyes and wait for it to end.

Midnight in Paris: Movie Review

Midnight in Paris: Movie Review

Midnight In Paris
Rating: 7/10
Cast: Owen Wilson, Michael Sheen, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard
Director: Woody Allen
Owen Wilson stars in Woody Allen's latest, a whimsical look at life in the French capital.
Wilson is Gil, a screen writer for Hollywood who's served up some trashy stuff before and is looking to broaden out his horizons by writing a novel.
He's in Paris with his fiancée Inez (McAdams) holidaying with her family and dreaming of a romantic life in the city of love, with walks in the rain, sauntering down the streets during the day and reflecting on what future may lie ahead.
But one night, after leaving his fiancée to go dancing with some mutual friends, Gil finds himself transported back to Paris of the 1920s when midnight strikes and into the world of some of his literary heroes.
This latest from Allen is a slight, uncomplicated and sumptuously shot piece. Opening with a jazzy soundtrack and some picture postcard moments of Paris, it's clear, for once, the writer/ director's gone for something simpler and something which wallows more in the nostalgic side of life.
Wilson is in fine form as essentially, an extension of Woody Allen; McAdams and Sheen are quite insufferable though as a fiancée and friend who clearly don't like or respect Gil so it's hard to see why exactly you should feel any sympathy for them when they get their comeuppance.

But it's the period detail where Allen's latest shines; the recreation of the 1920s scene is amazing and fantastical. With the usual smattering of some good one liners, this is a frothy piece of escapist cinema, which is light and breezy and extremely likeable.

Dr Who - Day of the Daleks - DVD Review

Dr Who - Day of the Daleks - DVD Review

Dr Who Day Of the Daleks
Rating: PG
Released by BBC and Roadshow
This two disc release from the Classic Dr Who archive is something to be treasured for fans of the show - but not for the main attraction, it has to be sadly said.
The story is a four part adventure from 1972 and sees Jon Pertwee's Dr and assistant Jo Grant caught up in a potential war between the Daleks and mankind. On the eve of a peace conference between China and the rest of the world, the Doc's called in to investigate reports of ghosts. Soon, he finds himself facing his deadliest enemies.
The main story is itself a little slow paced and a bit of a mish mash of political machinations and a lot of talking, with very little action. It also suffers from a dreadfully simplistic denouement and gives some credence to why Dr Who of the 1970s was occasionally scoffed at.
However, the special features rise this average, but much loved, tale out of the mire. With a raft of documentaries and tidbits, there's already a lot to savour. But throw into that mix, a remastered version with special effects from today's CGI standards, brand new Dalek voices and some specially shot sequences, and you've got a tale which stands out a little more. It's a great touch to the range and while some purists may feel the special edition has gone a little too far, it really does much to enhance the overall feel of the adventure.

Rating: 7/10