In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.
Asger Leth | 102 mins | Blu-ray | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 12 / PG-13
A man books into a swish hotel, has a nice meal, then climbs out the window. Onlookers and police gather. Will he jump? Or is he just a distraction?
What follows is pretty generic ‘single location thriller’ material, with a thoroughly daft ending… but when the whole film strains plausibility (it’s not trying to be The Wire), do we buy it?
It is mostly enjoyable, especially as I like this kind of thriller (see: Phone Booth, Inside Man). It isn’t as accomplished as those, but it’s not bad — at worst, it’s average. Genre fans should be entertained while it lasts.
The island town of Swallow Falls exists for one purpose: sardines; the fishing, packing, and distribution thereof. But when the world suddenly realises that sardines are gross, the town’s economy is left in tatters and the only foodstuff the islanders have is sardines. (While we’re on the glum bit, the location of Swallow Falls is identical to the real-world location of Bermuda, except in this reality almost every inhabitant is Caucasian and the island is indisputably part of the US. This is why you don’t scrutinise the geopolitics of kids’ movies, especially American ones.)
not an unworthy aim, and something Cloudy also achieves, but not a main consideration in my personal assessment of things. The main selling point is that it’s very funny. Of course there’s the slapstick cartoon humour, which is well done, but there’s also a lot of great one-liners, random asides, and the like. Not ‘adult jokes’ by any means, but I think it makes the film fun for grown-ups too.
He’s a very funny character, but that’s in the writing, directing and animation — the voice work is spectacularly minimal. Apparently Harris was offered the lead but turned it down for the “more interesting” part of Steve. Nothing against Hader, but if I were the directors I’d have tried to persuade him to do both.
I should probably learn to stop writing off non-Pixar animated movies so readily (and, based on what I’ve heard and seen of their last few efforts, maybe slacken off on the Pixar love. I say that as if it’s news — plenty of people already have; and I’ve never been wholly on that bandwagon anyway. But I digress…) Big, bold, colourful, funny and exciting, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is the kind of film I imagine a lot of kids love and watch on loop. In the process they may even be learning some Important Moral Lessons, which, crucially, aren’t too heavy-handed. Many of these aspects work for adults too. I don’t know if you’d want to watch it on loop, but you may certainly want to watch it again.
Frank Drebin and the crew at Police Squad are back for the usual mix of silly one-liners and farcical slapstick. Fortunately, they’re as entertaining as ever.
Documentary about the life and work of Georges Méliès, with particular attention to 
The Extraordinary Voyage accompanies A Trip to the Moon on DVD (or, if you fancy spending a small fortune, Blu-ray), but arguments that it goes beyond a mere ‘special feature’ are worth hearing. It’s a worthy biography/tribute to a cinematic force whose influence is still felt today, coupled with the extraordinary story of how his supremacy is being preserved.
Of all the defining images of cinema — certainly of the silent era — the face on the Moon with a rocket in its eye must be one of the most recognised, though you have to wonder how many have actually seen Méliès’ full vision. More than it could have been, though, because A Trip to the Moon was so popular that, in the copyright-lax world of early cinema, it was widely copied and ripped-off; the kind of thing that destroyed Méliès’ career and, along with it, much of his work.
But Méliès wasn’t making a documentary, he was making an entertainment. Indeed, the analogy to a blockbuster is a good one, because this is essentially the turn-of-the-century equivalent. The fantastical sets, costumes and story are all designed to wow the viewer — and remember, we’re only a few years on from people diving out of the way of film of a train arriving in a station.
Whatever it is, it’s certainly not period-authentic.
“Old fogies go to India” is the setup of this frothy comedy-drama that clearly courts the so-called ‘grey pound’ — i.e. older viewers still prepared to pay to go to the cinema. But when said fogies are played by Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Celia Imrie and Penelope Wilton, it will surprise no one to learn there’s something here for us all.
Screenwriting partnership Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn vacate their usual milieu (see 
Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson weren’t the first to bring Hergé’s journalist-adventurer to the big screen, oh no… though you have to go quite far back — and much more obscure — to find the previous efforts.
(I don’t know if the BFI DVD includes the original French, Turkish and Greek soundtrack, but on TV it was entirely dubbed into English. There’s a French Blu-ray, but it doesn’t look to be English friendly.)
Denzel Washington is a fugitive, Ryan Reynolds is the CIA rookie who ends up looking after him — and later, chasing him — after Something Goes Wrong at the titular abode in this workmanlike thriller.
100Films.co.uk 