Southland Tales

Ever since Southland Tales got slated at Cannes, I've been looking forward to seeing it. Normally, those films that polarise opinion (or just plain get hammered), I tend to love. The Fountain, for example, is without a doubt one of my favourite films of all time.

I was looking forward to it even more due to the fact that Richard Kelly was directing. Donnie Darko was an absolute masterpiece.

So you can begin to imagine how disappointed I was when Southland Tales turned out to be a staggering pile of shit.

It's terrifyingly bad. I'm not talking bad in a fun way; something you could whack on with a bunch of mates and enjoy, even if it isn't going to win any awards - like Phantoms, or Dead or Alive, or the oeuvre of Uwe Boll. I mean it's embarassingly bad. It's crushingly dull; overbearingly pretentious, and is trying far too hard to be 'quirky'. It's like watching the works of a sixth-form goth who's obsessed by David Lynch.

The cast is ridiculous, for a start. I mean, just look at who's in it: Justin Timberlake. The Rock. Miranda Richardson. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Bai Ling. Christopher Lambert. Sean William Scott. Mandy Moore. Wallace Shawn. So you've got scenes where Queenie from Blackadder and Rex from Toy Story are spouting pseudo-science rubbish and it's impossible to take it seriously. Hell, it doesn't matter who's saying it, it'd still be garbage: you can't polish a turd.

I'll be honest, I couldn't even sit through it all. It's incredibly rare that I don't see a film through to the end. After ten minutes, my GTA IV craving was beginning to itch; however, I was determined to see it through. At 1hr 30mins, bored off my tits, I realised that there was still almost an hour to go. Maybe one day I'll finish it off. Mind you, someone should have finished this bloody film off long before it even finished shooting.

Gerard Butler: No.

Yes.

Yes.


No.


No.

That is all.

Curse of the Golden Flower

Let's be clear from the start: I love Zhang Yimou films. Absolutely adore them. House of Flying Daggers is without doubt one of my favourite films of all time. I even managed to blag my way into one of the first UK preview screenings of it. So it was with great anticipation that I watched Curse of the Golden Flower. I missed it at the cinema - mainly because it can be a real pain in the arse trying to find anywhere playing World Cinema outside of Dublin - so I finally got round to watching it on DVD this weekend.

And... it's not very good.

Don't get me wrong, it looks incredible, as can always be expected. It's even more extravagant than his previous films; the palace is literally stunning. It's an utter explosion of colour, the costumes are beyond extravagant, and, somewhere between House... and Curse..., he discovered boobs. This film is cleavagetastic. Seriously, Gong Li could use her cleavage as a shelf. The openng sequence is just boobs.

Anyway, enough about the boobs, and onto what's wrong. For a start, this is barely a martial arts film. It's true that Yimou's films have always been more than martial arts; hell, House... is a love story with kicking. But this is just a period drama; the final battle withstanding, there's very little action that sticks in the mind.

More criminally for me is the storyline - while it's as twisting and turning as its epic predecessors, it's also predictable and quite dull. All the characters are very two-dimensional, and are all unlikeable, despicable, back-stabbing shits. There isn't a drop of sympathy or empathy for any of them at all, meaning that quite frankly, I couldn't care less about who came out on top of the family power-struggle. They're all just bland. It's not like the characters from Hero or House; just think of the fantastic characters in those films: Maggie Cheung as Flying Snow, Donnie Yen as Sky, Jet Li as nameless, Zhang Ziyi as Xiao Mei, Andy Lau as Leo, Takeshi Kaneshiro as Jin... they were all fantastic creations, larger-than-life. Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li are both pretty good, but there's just not a lot below the surface. They're both plotting, scheming, evil shites.

It's all surface and no depth. Without the backbone, Yimou's visual opulence just accentuates how shallow the film is. There's very little to recommend about the film apart from just how pretty it is - and what's the point of that when you could just watch something with beauty and depth?

Atonement

I watched Atonement last night. I've had it sat around the house for a while but, as usual, have been put off watching it by the fact that Keira Knightley a) only has one facial expression and b) can't act (the former may affect the latter).

I must say, however, that I was pleasantly surprised. Well, I say 'pleasantly'; despite stunning cinematography and an utterly fantastic score, there's very little pleasant about the film. Based on the Ian McEwan novel, it details how one lie by a young girl can have such an effect on three lives - that of her sister, her sister's lover, and ultimately, herself. Special mention must go to the acting - James McEvoy is as brilliant as ever, once again proving he's one of Britain's finest actors. And Saoirse Ronan was amazing - she portrays a frosty, precocious, hateful little English girl, despite being a wee Irish lass. It's hard to say she's good in it because I hated her character, but that, I suppose, is the sign of some seriously good acting (well, perhaps not; the urge to strangle teenagers is quite a common one). And yes, I'll say it - even Keira is good in it.

It's the way it is shot that surprised me most, though. After the oscar nominations, the cast, the marketing, I was expecting a fairly straightforward romance. It's not. It's languid, almost dream-like at points; long, drawn-out shots, unusual framing - and the single-shot Dunkirk sequence is amazing, one of the finest pieces of cinema I have seen in years.

It's a fantastic film; surprising, moving, brave and ambitious. It comes highly recommended.