More Movie Reviews!

[philosoraptor42]

Monsters Vs Aliens

Naturally since I’m watching it on a rented DVD I don’t have the 3D effects and to be quite honest, I still thought it was awesome. There wasn’t a fantastic plot (though definitely more of one than Twilight had), but there’s no doubting that this was absolutely brilliant fun.

The main characters are all clearly taken from classic monster movies:
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Godzilla
The Fly
The Blob
and Attack Of The 50ft Woman 

Also there’s a definite Dr. Strangelove connection at certain points, leading to a rather surprising ending for a children’s movie. Stephen Colbert is very entertaining as president. All in all great fun. 4/5

Anvil – The Story of Anvil

This was possibly built up too much for me, but essentially this is about a real band who for some reason have never made it big. They’ve played alongside Metallica and Guns And Roses, yet somehow they fell straight into obscurity. This is about their attempt to get noticed again and it’s a very emotional movie. It’s misleading that one of the band members is called Robb Reiner (which is very similar to the name of the director of This Is Spinal Tap) since it seems to be a real life version of the (fake) Spinal Tap story.

BTW Mark Kermode refers to it as “the love story of the year”. Watch it to see what that means.

Undoubtedly brilliant, but in the end it must be said that, after the initial premise, it rarely surprised me. 4.5/5

Fire

I’ve been intending to watch this for ages. This was the only one of Deepa Mehta’s trilogy that I had not yet seen. Water was brilliant, but the liberal reformist was rather overly smug and the widow he intended to marry in order to buck tradition was rather lacking in character. Earth was a pretty cool exploration of the chaos surrounding the partition of India, but the preamble of “we’re such good friends and that’s never going to change” was a little too obviously doomed. The consideration of the Parsi family made it a little different, but it still felt somewhat flawed.

Now move on to Fire and this is the first of the three movies which seems to be absolutely perfect from beginning to end. The relationships between the characters are very realistic. The interesting thing about the movie is that when the taboos are broken the reaction is closer to confusion than condemnation. The focus is very much on the plight of women and exploring the idea of what it means to be a “good wife” in line with Hindu tradition when the husbands are neglectful and full of self-importance.

If you enjoyed Water then you’ll love this. Earth is also well worth a watch. Nevertheless, I feel confident in asserting that this is the best of the three. A very moving exploration of women’s rights from within the duty-centred Hindu culture. 5/5

Julia

Oh my goodness, how glad I was to see this. Julia is the most despicable person you’ve ever come across. She’s a selfish alcoholic and you spend most of the movie wondering what awful thing she’s going to do next. It’s blooming long at 2 hours, but the running time is well worth it. Some have claimed that the ending is unsatisfying. I think it helps to be warned that the ending isn’t going to be clear-cut, but my personal view is that it is ambiguous. Totally outrageous and gripping from start to finish, despite a relatively slow start. Everyone should check this out. You will not regret it. 5/5