Stephen’s Weekly Movie Round-Up
Here it is once again – a round up of the films Anne and I have watched in the last week. Now you’ll know what to stick in your DVD players, and what to stick in the box marked “to the charity shop, and fast”. My mum tells me she skips the films reviews – you might want to too!
Bend It Like Beckham
We’ve come all this way and we watch a film set in West London – fools! This is a fun British film about a British/Indian girl who enjoys playing soccer (for a girls’ team), but has to contend with her strict-parents forbidding her to play. Seemed a bit far-fetched to me, since soccer’s such a dull, dull game, however it was well made and pretty funny. Fairly forgettable I suppose, but it’s the sort of film Brits can do well. Notably, the hero’s overly-skinny white girl friend played Natalie Portman’s decoy in Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, I gather. Yes – look impressed.
Three and a half stars (and I only called the game “soccer” to annoy British soccer fans).
Men In Black II
Much the same as the first Men In Black film, but without the novelty value. Some of the effects were poor, and most of the jokes weren’t funny the second time around. The writers obviously thought, “The talking dog was popular in the first film – let’s put him on-screen more in the sequel and we’re guaranteed laughs”. They were wrong – the dog is funny in as much as a talking dog is a funny idea, but there’s nothing new here. Tommy Lee Jones was one of the best things about the first film, and here he does nothing. Yawn!
Watch the first film again rather than hiring this. The film lasts a paltry 84 minutes (including closing credits) so I suppose the best that can be said about it is that it’s mercifully short,
One and a half stars.
Bowling For Columbine
Anne’s already given her review of this, so let me add my tuppence-worth. It’s a well-made documentary about gun-crime in the US, and the violent nature of the US in general. I was expecting Michael Moore’s conclusions to be that there’s more shootings in the US because of easy access to guns. However, whilst that’s undoubtably a factor, it can’t be that simple – Candians have easy access to guns too, but they don’t have anything like the gun-crime rate of the US. He makes a case for a cycle of fear and paranoia in the US perpetuated by the media. Frightening, funny, sad and well deserving of the Oscar.
Five stars.
Mission: Impossible 2
I knew this was a bit poo, but it was on the TV and I knew it was filmed in and around Sydney so wanted to watch it again (I saw it at the flicks when it came out).
Whilst I like it being a different style of film to the first film, which was more clever and sophisticated, I think the John Woo action scenes just made it seem like any other OTT action film. There was little intelligence and a lot of stupidity. Tom Cruise has grown his hair since the first film, presumably so it waves about “artistically” when viewed in slow motion. And what’s with those doves??
Two and a half stars.