philosoraptor42

So....these are the Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve movies respectively.

Paul (2011)

Okay so, I'd been interesting in seeing this, but concerns over toilet humour meant that I didn't see it in the cinema. So what better time to check it out than when we were auditioning a possible Christmas Day movie? First of all I feel we need to tackle the toilet humour issue. Interestingly the toilet humour doesn't seem to come from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost at all, however a lot of it comes from Seth Rogen's eponymous alien. Still, as much as I'd love to put all the blame on Rogen and let Pegg and Frost off the hook, the lines aren't simply improvised by the actors. Still, it's definitely there, including a recurring joke where there is a continued reference to "spaceman balls". However, there are plenty of jokes that aren't toilet humour.

Towards the end of the movie, the film seems to suddenly need to rely on movie references with some shameless references to Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Admittedly this is set up by earlier claims that Seth Rogen's eponymous alien was in contact with Spielberg and the movie references act as a rather helpful counter-balance to the lack of interesting plot elements in the third act. Sigourney Weaver turns up with a less than worthy camero appearance (though it does serve to set-up the inclusion of an iconic line from "Aliens").

All in all this was fairly entertaining and I won't say that it was a bad movie. I think I need to bear in mind that I'd probably be rather more forgiving towards the films flaws if it weren't Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in the lead parts. That said, those two manage to elevate what is essentially a typical *ahem* "hilarious" American comedy from which I'd normally run a mile.

If you absolutely need to see another Nick Frost and Simon Pegg comedy duo movie, this isn't half bad. It isn't half great either though. This is very much a middling movie and I'm disinclined to give it more credit than it deserved. There was a lot of potential here, but in the end I don't think it was built on enough. But I'll still admit that I did laugh albeit not consistently.

C+

Julie and Julia (2009)

It turned out that nearly everyone had already seen "The King's Speech". After Horrible Bosses was put on screen and "Big F***ing Asshole" appeared on screen in massive white letters, it was decided that "Horrible Bosses" really wasn't the right movie for my grandparents. (I must admit that if I hadn't mixed up "Jennifer Aniston" with "Julia Roberts" we'd probably have recognised this rather quicker.)

.....

So the movie for Christmas Day was finally switched to "Julia and Julia", the Meryl Streep film whose marketing seemed barely indistinguishable from her other film "It's Complicated". (Asides from the trailer for It's Complicated being substantially more memorable in it's level of repulsion.)

There are two appealing elements to this movie. Meryl Streep's domineering performance as the food writer "Julia Childs" and Amy Adams heartfelt performance as an aspiring writer and blogger. Both appear in mediocre storylines which are expertly combined. Unfortunately there's a limit to how much the way the two storylines are combined can avoid being undermined by the mediocre level of the two individual storylines. However, this film most definitely reaches the utmost boundaries of that limit.

Essentially this is a much-much-MUCH-better-than-average-rom-com. Amy Adams has several annoying friends who are barely friendly and you can't imagine why she'd spend time with them. They have about five minutes with her before they are pretty much never seen again, almost as if the writer were ticking off a box on the "obligatory elements in cheesy rom com" checklist. On the other hand Meryl Streep has a sister who decides she wants to get married and rather sweetly ends up with someone no one was expecting before disappearing from the storyline entirely, with this seemingly checking off the "cheesy milking of sweeter elements of history for bio-pic" checklist. At one point Amy Adams has an argument with her boyfriend that very nearly reaches the lows of the ultra-unrealistic relationship in "The Devil Wears Prada" (where the boyfriend seemingly has an argument with his girlfriend because "success has changed her" and we are randomly expected to side with the boyfriend).

Still, I cannot deny that the plot moves along very well, that there are many points where the movie pulled me into an emotional state without cheating, that Meryl Streep is absolutely fantastic in her role, that this is one of the better performances I've seen from Amy Adams, or that I wasn't fully behind Amy Adam's aspiring blog-writer by the end.

In fact when I first sat down to review this (and I'm sure that few have failed to notice that these reviews are coming to you substantially later than when I first watched the movies), I was inclined to give this a B+ (as a very good movie). It is only in retrospect that I've come to recognise the more twee elements of this film. If you are actually quite keen on the occasional cheesy rom-com and this has somehow passed you by then I'd have to recommend this particular highly to you in particular. However, perhaps it's my own misplaced sense of pride, but I feel disinclined to rank this any higher than as a good solid movie. It does what it's supposed to do and acts as a great piece of entertainment. Meryl Streep in particular provides a flawless performance (and I'm sure her role as a toothless caricature of Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" involves a similarly excellent performance). If you want something harmless and fun one evening you could do a lot worse.

B-

Hanna (2011)

This was a film I'd been looking forward to a great deal. The trailer made it into one of my "Too Good To Be True" entries and, though I know that trailers can be deceiving, I was pretty sure this wouldn't disappoint. Naturally there's the inclusion of Saoirse Ronan and Cate Blanchette, who are both great actresses, but also the director Joe Wright. While it seems to have become trendy in a few quarters (*ahem* Mark Kermode *ahem*) to badmouth "Atonement", I actually reckon that was an excellent movie. It's probably not one of my absolute favourites of that year, but it's fantastic all the same.

In this film, Saoirse Ronan is on top form as the girl "Hanna" trained by her father in the middle nowhere (in Siberia?) to be the ultimate assassin. Taking the part of our protagonist, she is fluent in multiple languages and can carry on a conversation in perfect Arabic without a hitch, but is disturbed by radios and televisions. The role of her father is played by Eric Bana who I've never really been able to take seriously since "Hulk", but admittedly does an alright job here. Sadly Cate Blanchett also doesn't seem to give much more than an "alright" performance is spite of having shown herself capable of much more elsewhere.

The soundtrack is very obviously from the Chemical Brothers, but it does the trick. Still, the central whistling theme quickly seems overused. This theme is used to introduce the evil lackey played by Tom Hollander. He is often expected to whistle it, which might have been rather more unnerving if it wasn't often also part of the background music.

Tom Hollander does his absolute best portraying a pitiless bad guy in a tracksuit and does a remarkably good job considering what he has to work with. While Eric Bana gets one of the most awesome setpieces of the movie in a gunfight where he wrestles with agents and avoids gunshots expertly, Tom Hollander doesn't really get much of a chance to anything terribly bad to anyone. As part of the overarching fairtale theme, Tom Hollander is introduced in a strip club choreographing a Snow White themed burlesque show. Apparently he's evil because the woman he's directing is a hermaphrodite. *shrugs*

Hanna's destination for much of the movie appears to be a kind of gingerbread house. It looks like she's got her own personal version of the Dutch theme park Efteling waiting for her.

Typical "fairytale" house from Dutch theme park "Efteling".

I can't say I wasn't entertained while the movie was running. The pacing is good and things are pretty interesting, particularly towards the beginning. The problem however (and I'm disinclined to be forgiving on this issue) is that the ending completely fails to make use of the initial premise. In the end, I was let down. All the elements that were set up never really went anywhere, with the rather lame excuse of "oh it's all like a fairytale". I'm sorry, but fairytales are more interesting than that. I think Joe Wright is a good director, but if he can't find enough to do with the talents of Cate Blanchett and Tom Hollander then he needs to insist on a more interesting and satisfying script.

C+