Review

Man of the Year isn’t a movie I mentioned in my Movies of 07 post, but that’s mostly because there was no hype around it at all, and I only found out about it when the trailers started appearing on TV last week. The set up: A comedian gets elected president. How much more do you need? Robin Williams is Tom Dobbs, a Colbert-esque comedian poking humour into news. One night, a member of the audience suggests he run for president. So he does, and because of a glitch in the computerised voting system, he gets voted in. Storyline ensues. What’s most important about this movie is that it’s got Robin Williams. Robin Williams. And Christopher Walken! Sure-fire humour! ...

Babel is one of those occasional movies that aim to be a little “high-concept”, exploring new ways of storytelling in movies, usually to express an idea rather than tell a direct plot. It’s left up to the viewer as to whether they absorb the message, or indeed what message they absorb. Crash was one of those that proved to be successful enough with viewers and critics alike; it remains to be seen if Babel will quite achieve the same. ...

Enough Politics! Casino Royale, the 21st Bond film, goes back to the “start”, the story of how Bond became Bond. Only… it’s not. It’s full of little cues to all those standard Bond quirks. The ignore-what-happened-last-time persists, as in all Bond flicks, but Bond’s never gone backwards, as it were. For cryin’ out loud, Q (or his ertswhile replacement John Cleese) is missing! The whole atmosphere feels like it could be, should be, set against the cloak-and-dagger of the Cold War - but it’s the international terrorist financing that provides the bad guy (don’t worry, this isn’t anything spoilerish). ...

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest: ★★★★ Good fun ride, but much like Kill Bill 1 or The Two Towers, it’s been stretched a little too long in order to justify release as a movie by itself, and basically has only half the plot it should have had, with the end leaving you hanging. The last half hour has all the stuff that really counts, so I’m very much looking forward to the final chapter of the story wrapping it up. Which, as a matter of course, is exactly what the creators intended. Bastards. ...

Watched M:I:3 last night. First impression within 30 seconds of the start: Wow, get a bloody steadycam or tripod, will you? Yeesh. I don’t know what makes film makerst think a camera shaking like crazy, at an unecessary time (i.e. when the action is mostly static), is somehow “modern” and “cool”. All it does is make me want to close my eyes before I get a headache. Also, most overused plot technique in movies these days: the flash-forward, or perhaps half-movie-is-flashback-from-first scene. I don’t know which movie did it first - Fight Club is the first example I can remember - but now it’s just getting predictable - “Oh look! First Scene and we’re in the thick of things and we the audience have no clue what’s going on! I know, we’ll wait for the plot exposition.” ...