Crass and confrontational sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to doing the job “his way” - this includes tampering with crime scenes, stealing drugs from the pockets of murder victims (and keeping them for personal use), and generally breaking the rules.
His world is turned upside down by FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), who arrives in Galway to investigate an international drug-smuggling case.
The first part of The Deathly Hallows takes the darkness of the previous Potter films and cranks it up to eleven. It occurs to me that I’ve used the term darker a lot in my ramblings and have tended to favour the movies which include darker themes.
I suppose my reasoning behind this is simply that, by and large, a film with darker elements will tend to appeal more to an adult audience and not be too concerned with being child friendly. Furthermore, a bleaker film can often carry more of an emotional impact than a happy-go-lucky, light-hearted romp.
In a studio-bound Buenos Aires, washed-up gambler Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is saved from a dockside beating by a swordstick-wielding stranger named Ballin Mundson (George Mcready.) Mundson owns a casino that makes Humphrey Bogart's gin-joint in Casablanca look positively seedy. Soon Johnny is running the place for him and generally being his obedient little friend.
Johnny and Ballin are as thick as thieves and all is well in the land of tumbling dice, until, that is, Ballin returns from a trip to the interior suffering from a bad case of impulsive wedlock. The wench in question is Gilda (Rita Hayworth,) an old flame of Johnny's with a score to settle. Before he can order a round of cocktails, Ballin finds his two pets locked in the first of many cat-fights.
Reading like a who's who of modern American TV comedy, Horrible Bosses has a small screen sensibility and big screen aspirations. At the centre of proceedings Jason Bateman plays the straight man and comic foil he has perfected over the past few years with best friends Jason Sudeikis (not straying too far away from his performance in this year's Hall Pass) and Charlie Day both going for neurotic, broad laughs.
‘The British are coming!’ was the inevitable rallying cry in the ‘80s, every time someone – anyone – who had worked on a Brit flick so much as sneezed. This hubristic fashion for hollering about how close our film industry was to the Big O only saw us disappoint: not so much The British are Coming as the British Can’t Get It Up. But I often wondered why they wanted to.
Mrs Plex and I went to see Harry Potter at the weekend. I haven’t read the books yet – I’m waiting until my daughter is old enough and then we will read them together. I have, however, seen all of the films. I won’t say I’ve found the experience wholly satisfactory. The sheer length of the source material has meant that the screenplays have had to omit certain material, and rely upon the knowledge of the viewer/reader to fill in the blanks. If you haven’t read the books, like me – well, then, it is a case of ‘keep up at the back.’ I thought this problem was particularly acute for Deathly Hallows Part 1, in which I was frankly befuddled with all manner of seeming MacGuffins that I eventually lost all track of. That film was also a bit of a meandering bore, with the underpowered principal cast a little out of their depth when asked to shoulder the narrative burden on their own. ‘Harry On Camping’ was the best three word review of the film I read, and it was a little trepidation that I settled in for the finale.
The way in which audiences are consuming films is changing fast, and here at LitM we are not afraid to tackle those changes two-footed, just below the knee. If that means duct-taping an iPad to our clammy palms and trying to watch Saw while riding Saw: The Ride at Thorpe Park, or trying to watch our favourite teaser trailers on wafer-thin handsets whilst cycling through Leicester Square, then we feel duty bound to do just that, no matter the human cost.
The first in this series will take a look at the iPad’s first rival, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Released in 2010, it could already be called dated – is a clear indicator of just how fast the tablet market is moving. But the Galaxy Tab has some excellent features to offer and its smaller 7-inch size could make it a more mobile solution for people who want to carry the multiplex in their pocket. If you are still trying to decide which tablet is best for you, then stay tuned.
This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the classic Ealing crime-caper, The Lavender Hill Mob, starring Alec Guiness and Stanley Holloway, and, to celebrate, the film is getting the re-release treatment with a brand new restoration.
The film follows bank clerk Henry Holland (played by Alec Guiness in an Oscar nominated role), a reputable and seemingly decent man who’s been in charge of gold bullion deliveries in London for 20 years.
Writer/Director, David Michôd's first feature-film, Animal Kingdom, was released on DVD last week. Starring James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton, the film gained numerous awards and nominations, breaking the record for most nominations for a feature film at the Australian Film Institute awards. It takes a gritty and visceral look into the heart of criminality in Melbourne, focusing on the notorious Cody family as they begin to unravel, both literally and mentally. Ben was kind enough to let Lost in the Multiplex interview him about the film and we picked his brain on what it was like to play the psychopathic oldest Cody brother, Pope.
Liam Neeson seems to have found his niche - as the hard-man upon whom you can rely. Taken saw him go head to head with people traffickers, and Unknown sees him take on assassins. All in a day's work for Mr. Neeson who could do this role in his sleep.
The plot has been done before, and will leave you with a sense of deja vu, which may be appropriate in a film about memory loss. But the pace and the set pieces never entirely make up for a heavy handed treatment of a cliched plot, though overall the film is an entertaining ride.
