Category Archives: 2007

Kinky Boots (2005)

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2007 #71
Julian Jarrold | 102 mins | DVD | 12 / PG-13

Kinky BootsA working class Britcom in the vein of films like The Full Monty.

It may take too long to get going properly, and even the most casual film viewer could jot down the key plot points from the start, but it nonetheless manages some laugh-out-loud moments, and it’s more often happy than groan-inducing when the ‘twists’ come off. If nothing else it’s worth seeing for Chiwetel Ejiofor (who you may recognise from films such as Serenity, Inside Man and Children of Men) as a drag queen.

My score may be a little generous, but all round I enjoyed watching it, so why not?

4 out of 5

Primer (2004)

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2007 #70
Shane Carruth | 74 mins | DVD | 12 / PG-13

PrimerAccording to many this is a real ‘love it or hate it’ film; in typically awkward fashion I’m going to place myself right in the middle.

The thing is, I can see both sides — there’s a great conceit here, with a decent plot built around it; but it drags the idea of treating your audience’s intelligence with respect too far into the realms of Simply Not Explaining Things Properly, including taking almost half the film for anything to become clear. Sadly this clarity only lasts a few minutes before things get muddled up again in the second half of the plot.

I’d like to be able to love Primer, but the things that make me want to hate it just pull it down.

3 out of 5

2007 | Week 31

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My quest to see 100 films I’ve never seen by the end of 2007 passes the three-quarters point this week, and we’re not even two-thirds of the way through the year!

This is the first single-week entry since week 14. As well as a concerted effort (such as three films on the Friday), it’s helped by a lessening in the amount of TV I’ve been watching — last entry’s list of 19 on-going programmes has shrunk to 13 by the end of this week. Some might say I watch too much TV…

Nonetheless, I’ve moved from about two films per week average over the last 16 weeks, to a total of eight films this week! Well well well.

As well as a Week Of More it’s a bit of a Week Of Quality. Three of this week’s films are ones I’ve been dying to see for ages, and the rest follow not too far behind (OK, maybe I wouldn’t’ve put the likes of Kinky Boots or Confetti on a list of films I was dying to see, but I did want to). There’s also a fair few awards and nominations, and no small amount of critical acclaim, across them.

One could also argue that it’s a Week Of Variety. To be honest, I suspect there’s always a fair bit of variety in my film choices, but this week it’s especially pronounced — straightforward British comedies stand by low-budget intellectual sci-fi; complex teenage faux-film noir sits next to epic trilogy-starting Russian fantasy/horror; American gangster thriller lies beside classic British romance… And, while most were made in the new millennium, there’s a spread of over 60 years between the oldest and the most recent. All within the space of seven days, too!

Perhaps because of all these reasons I’ve found choosing the final rating for every film here quite tricky; all of them have some malleability, either up or down.

#70 Primer

#71 Kinky Boots

#72 Brick

#73 Night Watch

#74 The Departed

#75 Confetti

#76 Brief Encounter

#77 Educating Rita

Mean Creek (2004)

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2007 #69
Jacob Aaron Estes | 86 mins | DVD | 15 / R

Mean CreekA group of teenagers concoct a plan for revenge on a bully in this drama from first-time writer/director Estes. Whilst the premise might sound straightforward and liable to be morally simplistic, the writing, acting and direction combine to make a film that is complex, tense, tragic and ultimately believable.

Some might argue it loses its way a little towards the end, almost struggling to find a suitable conclusion, but it doesn’t do so enough to make it anything less than an excellent film.

Highly recommended.

5 out of 5

Mean Creek placed 3rd on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2007, which can be read in full here.

Heat (1995)

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2007 #68
Michael Mann | 164 mins | DVD | 15 / R

HeatHeat will probably always be best remembered for two things: the excellent running shoot out on the streets of L.A., and De Niro and Pacino on screen together for the first (and, so far, last) time.

There’s a lot more to it than that, of course: ostensibly a cops-and-robbers crime drama, the film follows the personal lives of each side as well as the usual professional actions. The cop-with-failed-marriage / criminal-with-successful-relationship juxtaposition may already feel clichéd, but it works well enough here, and is well executed without distracting from the meat of the plot — which is, still, the crime and justice.

5 out of 5

Right at Your Door (2006)

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2007 #67
Chris Gorak | 91 mins | DVD | 15 / R

Right at Your DoorL.A. is hit by a series of ‘dirty bombs’ in this indie suspense thriller, that follows the story of what happens to one man in the suburbs, as well as the various people whose paths cross his.

Mainly based in one location (his home), the film is an effective and suspenseful account of what it’s like to be an ordinary person almost in the middle of such an attack. The frantic early pace does let up a little as the film goes on, but it remains gripping right up to the well-executed twist.

4 out of 5

Mystic River (2003)

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2007 #66
Clint Eastwood | 132 mins | DVD | 15 / R

Mystic RiverThe acting is the main draw of this Oscar-winning murder drama, in which three childhood friends who grew apart are brought back together when one of their daughters is murdered. Tim Robbins is particularly excellent, easily earning his Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Unfortunately most of the plot is not far above the standards of your average police procedural show, albeit fleshed out with more insight into the various characters and plot complexities — and, of course, with superior acting from all involved.

4 out of 5

2007 | Weeks 29-30

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Another two week stretch on my quest to see 100 new films by the end of the year. I’m just not seeing enough films per week to warrant entries that often, it would seem.

This time round I blame TV — so many new things have started, as well as continuing shows, that I spend most of my time keeping up! During these two weeks I’ve been watching Boomtown, British Film Forever, Cape Wrath, Dexter, Dirt, Dragons’ Den: Where Are They Now?, Eight Out of Ten Cats, Firefly, Heroes, House, Hyperdrive, Jekyll, Mock the Week, Shark, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Time of Your Life, Vanished, The Wire and Would I Lie To You, as well as a variety of one-off things. Quite a bit, I’m sure you’ll agree!

Nonetheless, I’ve managed to get a few things watched (half of them right at the end of the second week!) — and they’ve all turned out to be of good quality too, as you will surely see when you read my reviews…

#66 Mystic River

#67 Right at Your Door

#68 Heat

#69 Mean Creek

The Woodsman (2004)

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2007 #65
Nicole Kassell | 84 mins | DVD | 15 / R

The WoodsmanKevin Bacon stars in this compelling drama.

If anyone saw Channel 4’s recent Secret Life, this treads very similar ground — recently released paedophile struggles to fit back into the world and avoid recommitting former crimes. But whereas C4’s drama was issue-driven this is character-based; it doesn’t necessarily make it better, but it does make it different. Bacon manages the tricky task of eliciting sympathy and understanding as the paedophile (though perhaps not as much as Matthew Macfadyen did).

A relatively intelligent look at what is usually a mindlessly treated subject.

4 out of 5

Ringers: Lord of the Fans (2005)

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2007 #64
Carlene Cordova | 98 mins | DVD | 12 / PG-13

Ringers: Lord of the FansMade by the people behind the large Lord of the Rings fansite TheOneRing.net, you’d expect this documentary to focus itself on Lord of the Rings fandom. To a degree it does, but it also encompasses a history of the books and their popularity, as well as various thematic issues contained within them, and also takes in the various adaptations (though, criminally, doesn’t even mention the BBC radio version).

It’s a bit unfocussed, sometimes coming across as a selection of featurettes strung together with occasionally random linking interviews. There’s stuff of interest in here, but certainly not to everyone — only fans need apply.

3 out of 5