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philosoraptor42Three features to review today:
- The latest sci-fi movie from Andrew Niccol (whose next project is to try to adapt Stephanie Meyer's sci-fi novel into something worth our time).
- A sweet little French film that is sort of a romantic comedy, introduced by a young girl contemplating suicide.
- Finally "50/50", a light-hearted indie drama starring Joseph Gordon Levitt about an ordinary person whose life turns upside down when he is diagnosed with cancer.
In Time (2011)
I thought I had given this it's own "too good to be true" entry, but it seems that I considered it alongside other films, but I was certainly hopeful that this would be one of the better films of the year. I absolutely loved the trailer and thought the idea of a futuristic Robin Hood was really clever. Then the reviews came in an said that it was rubbish. About half way through finally watching the film I strongly felt that the reviews had been unfair. The premise was set up really well and there was a lot of scope to explore. I was genuinely expecting to be giving this an "A". And that's where things started to go really wrong.
The basic premise is that Justin Timberlake (who, yes, is a pretty reasonable actor, even in a lead role) is an ordinary guy in the future slums. In the future "time is money" is no longer a metaphor. Everyone has a green digital counter glowing on their arm counting down to their own death, but on the plus-side no one ages above 25 (the age when the clock starts counting down). You pay for things in time on your "life clock" (they don't call it that) and in turn you are paid in time too. For our protagonist, the aim is to wake up with more hours than there are in the day.
Then suddenly someone turns up freely showing off a life clock with over a hundred years on the counter and paying for everyone's drinks in the bar he's sitting in. It's pretty much inevitable that he's going to be mugged (i.e. have all his years forcibly removed from him until he's dead). Our protagonist saves him, but the guy with a hundred years explains that he's actually extremely old and semi-suicidal. He reveals that there's something screwed up with the system because it encourages everyone to think that they have a chance at living forever when actually it is only ever going to be possible for a select few. He decides to give our protagonist his hundred years to all but the last five minutes and sits on a bridge until his timer runs out.
The protagonist then makes his way to the area where rich people live in order to see how the other half lives...
So our protagonist is a mysterious figure who knows the injustices in the system and is in a position where he is wealthy enough to do something about it. We also know from the trailer that he is going to start robbing banks. Now the scene the trailer gives us a glimpse of if particularly annoying in the film because it seems to be suggested that robbing a bank is easy in this world.
Let me put the problem like this. We have a hypothetical world where money isn't simply what you use in order to live, but is your life itself. What's more, people surrounding this bank are in danger of running out of time on that day, every day. Yet for some reason we are supposed to believe that no one has ever had the idea of ram-raiding a bank and stealing hundreds and thousands of years from its vault before?
Essentially instead of focussing on a Robin Hood-esque sci-fi action story which builds on the ideas set up at the beginning. Now certainly a few ideas are set up and then followed through later, but a lot of the ideas don't quite work as well as the initial ideas which set up this future world in the first place. One particularly important idea relates to the question of how the "time keepers" (i.e. law enforcers) avoid being set upon by the desperate poor whose time is quickly running out. Cillian Murphy plays a time keeper with a mysterious past (which sadly only gets lip service in terms of the plot). It turns out that the "time keepers" don't carry much time around with them and have to occasionally top-up from their cars. However, when it turns out that anyone could get into a police car and use it to top up their time, I felt that rather messed up the logic on this point.
As the films goes on the ideas and references get slowly more desperate. There's even a line: "I'd say 'your money or your life' but for you its both." ... Um, yes, but that's true for EVERY SINGLE PERSON that you have EVER MET in your ENTIRE LIFE!!! Heck, how would anyone in this world ever have even heard the phrase "your money or your life" considering the clear logical inconsistency it poses for them?
I suppose, like with Andrew Niccol's other sci-fi movie "Gattaca", we are supposed to worry less about the background premise as we become more interested in the central romance. Sadly, while the romantic interest in Gattaca was Uma Thurman, here it is Amanda Seyfried who cannot act for toffee.
What makes things worse is that I think Amanda Seyfried may originally have been meant to have played an even more central role than this. While the first half features him learning how the rich live, the second half involves him introducing the poorer side of things to Seyfried's character. She just never looks terribly affected by anything she's told, seeming more like an opportunity for Timberlake to reveal ideas to the audience rather than someone who is geniuinely caught up in the situation around her.
Now I'll admit that the performances aren't that great from anyone and a lot of the time people seem to be struggling just to come across naturally when every other line is a pun. However, I felt that Amanda Seyfried came across as exceptionally wooden and when she is essentially the co-star with Timberlake, that's not a good sign at all.
This started off with some great ideas, but lost its way horribly at the halfway point. It's still enjoyable enough, but it's not a very good film at all.
C-
The Hedgehog (2009)
I've got a real mixture of feelings on this one. The film starts by suggesting that the film is going to be about one ultra-smart introverted girl who is contemplating suicide in a very cold rational way. She's put a time limit on it. Quite a dramatic beginning.
However, in the end the film isn't really about her. It's about the janitor of the appartment complex, herself an introverted and complex woman, and her relationship with a charming Japanese widower who arrives in the building. The relationship between the janitor (played brilliantly by Josiane Balasko) and the Japanese widower (also played brilliantly, by Togo Igawa who has been in absolutely everything, even a few episodes of IT Crowd).
The girl's connection with this is that she somehow has a good relationship with both of these two people. Some kind of special charm, I guess.... Not convinced by that to be honest. Oh and (apparently) she's randomly taking Japanese lessons (as you do).
I wasn't keen on the ending, not simply because of what happens but because of how the movie wants me to feel about it. (Always awkward discussing endings without spoilers.)
So yes, if this was just about the janitor and the Japanese widower I'd probably be giving this at least an A-. And if the way the film tries to share the protagonist spotlight between the little girl and the janitor hadn't caused me problems with the ending, this might have got a B+. However, the way the film struggles to pretend to be about this little girl when she eventually seems to become an annoying distraction from the main characters just annoyed me too much. Not only that, but this little girl just seems to know too much (like knowing about a secret library that she's never seen).
This is worth watching. It's a good little film. But it could have been one of my favourites and I'm a little disappointed that instead it's just 'a good little film'.
B-
50/50 (2011)
You know how weird it seemed to hear this was going to be a laugh-out-loud comedy about someone suffering from terminal cancer? Well you were absolutely right to be sceptical. This isn't anything of the sort.
I believe this is the first film I've seen starring Seth Rogen asides from "Paul". I think perhaps we are supposed to find him funny, but I just found him irritating. He plays a particularly obnoxious and selfish figure and I'm guessing the idea was supposed to be that he would dominate in each scene. Unfortunately he is not that great at acting and he's just massively out-classed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Now don't get me wrong, I though Seth Rogen was pretty good as Paul in "Paul", so I won't be turned off by him doing voice work in the future. However as an on-screen actor? Forget it...
The scriptwriters clearly know that this is a character who is going to make us angry, so they try (badly) to get us back on his side in a number of ways. Firstly, they have him reveal to JGL the infidelity of his girlfriend and have him humiliate her. Unfortunately it's so obvious that he's more interested in humiliating the girlfriend that he doesn't like rather than helping his clearly depressed cancer-suffering "friend" that it just comes across as selfish and douchey.
Secondly, he helps JGL use his cancer to get girls. This is probably the best bit of the film and it would have been good if they hadn't wasted so much time getting to this stage because much of film beforehand (and to be honest, a fair bit afterwards too) is INSUFFERABLE. Still, it's clear that Seth Rogen's character is using the sympathy appeal of his friend's cancer to get himself a girl while he takes advantage of his friend's proscribed medicinal marijuana. So yeah, still douchey, selfish and unsympathetic.
Finally the point where we are really supposed to suddenly change our minds about this obnoxious S.O.B. is when JGL discovers that the guy has a copy of a book about helping a friend with cancer that has underlined bits and little notes written in the margins. When the "wow, how wrong was I" expression comes on to JGL's face and the sentimental music kicks in, that really DID make me laugh out loud. It reminded me of the bit in Family Guy where a big gruff discourteous figure acts rather mean and Peter Griffin grumbles "what a badass" (meaning that in a bad way). Another co-worker responds by saying "Well that 'bad-ass' just gave half his wages to orphans. Orphans with diseases!" Cue sentimental music while showing the same gruff mean figure looking just as mean as he did before. - The point is that one good thing someone does privately doesn't counteract them acting like a douche publically. So he read a book? Great, but he's still a dickhead.
It's a pity that Seth Rogen plays such a big part since there are some other actors who do a pretty good job. Naturally JGL is great in the starring role. Anjelica Huston (Morticia Addams from the "Addams Family" movies) is equally fantastic as the mother. We get some genuinely brilliant moments between the two of them.
Anna Kendrick is also pretty good, though I prefer her in her more expressive roles than her wet blanket roles and this was definitely a wet blanket character.
50/50 has its moments, but overall its a naff indie movie with a cheesy rom-com side to it, which is doing that "wow what a weird and wonderful place the world is" thing that seriously bugs me. But heck, let's put it this way... I didn't like "Juno" and I couldn't stand "Up In The Air" so if you enjoyed either of those, there's a possibility that this style of movie just appeals to you more. If you disliked either of those, however, I'd steer clear of this one.
D-
- The latest sci-fi movie from Andrew Niccol (whose next project is to try to adapt Stephanie Meyer's sci-fi novel into something worth our time).
- A sweet little French film that is sort of a romantic comedy, introduced by a young girl contemplating suicide.
- Finally "50/50", a light-hearted indie drama starring Joseph Gordon Levitt about an ordinary person whose life turns upside down when he is diagnosed with cancer.
In Time (2011)
I thought I had given this it's own "too good to be true" entry, but it seems that I considered it alongside other films, but I was certainly hopeful that this would be one of the better films of the year. I absolutely loved the trailer and thought the idea of a futuristic Robin Hood was really clever. Then the reviews came in an said that it was rubbish. About half way through finally watching the film I strongly felt that the reviews had been unfair. The premise was set up really well and there was a lot of scope to explore. I was genuinely expecting to be giving this an "A". And that's where things started to go really wrong.
The basic premise is that Justin Timberlake (who, yes, is a pretty reasonable actor, even in a lead role) is an ordinary guy in the future slums. In the future "time is money" is no longer a metaphor. Everyone has a green digital counter glowing on their arm counting down to their own death, but on the plus-side no one ages above 25 (the age when the clock starts counting down). You pay for things in time on your "life clock" (they don't call it that) and in turn you are paid in time too. For our protagonist, the aim is to wake up with more hours than there are in the day.
Then suddenly someone turns up freely showing off a life clock with over a hundred years on the counter and paying for everyone's drinks in the bar he's sitting in. It's pretty much inevitable that he's going to be mugged (i.e. have all his years forcibly removed from him until he's dead). Our protagonist saves him, but the guy with a hundred years explains that he's actually extremely old and semi-suicidal. He reveals that there's something screwed up with the system because it encourages everyone to think that they have a chance at living forever when actually it is only ever going to be possible for a select few. He decides to give our protagonist his hundred years to all but the last five minutes and sits on a bridge until his timer runs out.
The protagonist then makes his way to the area where rich people live in order to see how the other half lives...
So our protagonist is a mysterious figure who knows the injustices in the system and is in a position where he is wealthy enough to do something about it. We also know from the trailer that he is going to start robbing banks. Now the scene the trailer gives us a glimpse of if particularly annoying in the film because it seems to be suggested that robbing a bank is easy in this world.
Let me put the problem like this. We have a hypothetical world where money isn't simply what you use in order to live, but is your life itself. What's more, people surrounding this bank are in danger of running out of time on that day, every day. Yet for some reason we are supposed to believe that no one has ever had the idea of ram-raiding a bank and stealing hundreds and thousands of years from its vault before?
Essentially instead of focussing on a Robin Hood-esque sci-fi action story which builds on the ideas set up at the beginning. Now certainly a few ideas are set up and then followed through later, but a lot of the ideas don't quite work as well as the initial ideas which set up this future world in the first place. One particularly important idea relates to the question of how the "time keepers" (i.e. law enforcers) avoid being set upon by the desperate poor whose time is quickly running out. Cillian Murphy plays a time keeper with a mysterious past (which sadly only gets lip service in terms of the plot). It turns out that the "time keepers" don't carry much time around with them and have to occasionally top-up from their cars. However, when it turns out that anyone could get into a police car and use it to top up their time, I felt that rather messed up the logic on this point.
As the films goes on the ideas and references get slowly more desperate. There's even a line: "I'd say 'your money or your life' but for you its both." ... Um, yes, but that's true for EVERY SINGLE PERSON that you have EVER MET in your ENTIRE LIFE!!! Heck, how would anyone in this world ever have even heard the phrase "your money or your life" considering the clear logical inconsistency it poses for them?
I suppose, like with Andrew Niccol's other sci-fi movie "Gattaca", we are supposed to worry less about the background premise as we become more interested in the central romance. Sadly, while the romantic interest in Gattaca was Uma Thurman, here it is Amanda Seyfried who cannot act for toffee.
What makes things worse is that I think Amanda Seyfried may originally have been meant to have played an even more central role than this. While the first half features him learning how the rich live, the second half involves him introducing the poorer side of things to Seyfried's character. She just never looks terribly affected by anything she's told, seeming more like an opportunity for Timberlake to reveal ideas to the audience rather than someone who is geniuinely caught up in the situation around her.
Now I'll admit that the performances aren't that great from anyone and a lot of the time people seem to be struggling just to come across naturally when every other line is a pun. However, I felt that Amanda Seyfried came across as exceptionally wooden and when she is essentially the co-star with Timberlake, that's not a good sign at all.
This started off with some great ideas, but lost its way horribly at the halfway point. It's still enjoyable enough, but it's not a very good film at all.
C-
The Hedgehog (2009)
I've got a real mixture of feelings on this one. The film starts by suggesting that the film is going to be about one ultra-smart introverted girl who is contemplating suicide in a very cold rational way. She's put a time limit on it. Quite a dramatic beginning.
However, in the end the film isn't really about her. It's about the janitor of the appartment complex, herself an introverted and complex woman, and her relationship with a charming Japanese widower who arrives in the building. The relationship between the janitor (played brilliantly by Josiane Balasko) and the Japanese widower (also played brilliantly, by Togo Igawa who has been in absolutely everything, even a few episodes of IT Crowd).
The girl's connection with this is that she somehow has a good relationship with both of these two people. Some kind of special charm, I guess.... Not convinced by that to be honest. Oh and (apparently) she's randomly taking Japanese lessons (as you do).
I wasn't keen on the ending, not simply because of what happens but because of how the movie wants me to feel about it. (Always awkward discussing endings without spoilers.)
So yes, if this was just about the janitor and the Japanese widower I'd probably be giving this at least an A-. And if the way the film tries to share the protagonist spotlight between the little girl and the janitor hadn't caused me problems with the ending, this might have got a B+. However, the way the film struggles to pretend to be about this little girl when she eventually seems to become an annoying distraction from the main characters just annoyed me too much. Not only that, but this little girl just seems to know too much (like knowing about a secret library that she's never seen).
This is worth watching. It's a good little film. But it could have been one of my favourites and I'm a little disappointed that instead it's just 'a good little film'.
B-
50/50 (2011)
You know how weird it seemed to hear this was going to be a laugh-out-loud comedy about someone suffering from terminal cancer? Well you were absolutely right to be sceptical. This isn't anything of the sort.
I believe this is the first film I've seen starring Seth Rogen asides from "Paul". I think perhaps we are supposed to find him funny, but I just found him irritating. He plays a particularly obnoxious and selfish figure and I'm guessing the idea was supposed to be that he would dominate in each scene. Unfortunately he is not that great at acting and he's just massively out-classed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Now don't get me wrong, I though Seth Rogen was pretty good as Paul in "Paul", so I won't be turned off by him doing voice work in the future. However as an on-screen actor? Forget it...
The scriptwriters clearly know that this is a character who is going to make us angry, so they try (badly) to get us back on his side in a number of ways. Firstly, they have him reveal to JGL the infidelity of his girlfriend and have him humiliate her. Unfortunately it's so obvious that he's more interested in humiliating the girlfriend that he doesn't like rather than helping his clearly depressed cancer-suffering "friend" that it just comes across as selfish and douchey.
Secondly, he helps JGL use his cancer to get girls. This is probably the best bit of the film and it would have been good if they hadn't wasted so much time getting to this stage because much of film beforehand (and to be honest, a fair bit afterwards too) is INSUFFERABLE. Still, it's clear that Seth Rogen's character is using the sympathy appeal of his friend's cancer to get himself a girl while he takes advantage of his friend's proscribed medicinal marijuana. So yeah, still douchey, selfish and unsympathetic.
Finally the point where we are really supposed to suddenly change our minds about this obnoxious S.O.B. is when JGL discovers that the guy has a copy of a book about helping a friend with cancer that has underlined bits and little notes written in the margins. When the "wow, how wrong was I" expression comes on to JGL's face and the sentimental music kicks in, that really DID make me laugh out loud. It reminded me of the bit in Family Guy where a big gruff discourteous figure acts rather mean and Peter Griffin grumbles "what a badass" (meaning that in a bad way). Another co-worker responds by saying "Well that 'bad-ass' just gave half his wages to orphans. Orphans with diseases!" Cue sentimental music while showing the same gruff mean figure looking just as mean as he did before. - The point is that one good thing someone does privately doesn't counteract them acting like a douche publically. So he read a book? Great, but he's still a dickhead.
It's a pity that Seth Rogen plays such a big part since there are some other actors who do a pretty good job. Naturally JGL is great in the starring role. Anjelica Huston (Morticia Addams from the "Addams Family" movies) is equally fantastic as the mother. We get some genuinely brilliant moments between the two of them.
Anna Kendrick is also pretty good, though I prefer her in her more expressive roles than her wet blanket roles and this was definitely a wet blanket character.
50/50 has its moments, but overall its a naff indie movie with a cheesy rom-com side to it, which is doing that "wow what a weird and wonderful place the world is" thing that seriously bugs me. But heck, let's put it this way... I didn't like "Juno" and I couldn't stand "Up In The Air" so if you enjoyed either of those, there's a possibility that this style of movie just appeals to you more. If you disliked either of those, however, I'd steer clear of this one.
D-
