Caboose

On Tuesday night I went to see Solaris, since then I’ve not had a chance to write about it.

My main impression of the film was that it was trying too hard to be arty and mysterious. Everything about it seemed slightly forced. It probably wasn’t worth going to see, there are better ways to spend the time.

I liked the design of the space station though, it avoided the sci-fi cliche of spacecraft always being dark and gloomy with all the walls painted black and lots of flickering lighting. There seemed to be a few nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially the scene where Gordon is about to reactivate the station’s AI.

There was of course some of the usual pseudo-scientific babble, beams of Higgs bosons featured. They also managed to come to the conclusion that the apparations were composed of sub-atomic particles. Nobel prizes all round for the scientists of Solaris!

The best thing I can say about the film is that it’s better than the Seventies Russian effort, which is even more deliberately bewildering and dull.

Saw the trailer for this last week and thought it looked interesting. The trailer was very bitty and disconnected and it was difficult to work out what was going on, but you expect that from a trailer.

The film was pretty much the same, random and disconnected with only a very thin thread of plot.

Some of the individual scenes were absorbing, ridiculous or funny but overall the film was disappointing. It seemed like the director was trying too hard to make a point.

It’s been ages since I last went to the cinema, so it was just as well tonight’s film was a good one.

I saw Revengers Tragedy, which seems to be missing from the IMDB. It’s an adaptation of a play written in 1607 but now set slightly in the future and revolves around the main character’s revenge for the murder of his wife.

More information can be found on the film’s website and in director Alex Cox’s blog.

I liked the contrast between the modern (more run-down present than sci-fi future) setting and the archaic English dialog. Chumbawamba’s soundtrack also worked well. Go and see it, it’s fun.

Update: It seems Revengers Tragedy is in the IMDB, here, but their search engine couldn’t find it earlier. Odd.

Just noticed I hadn’t posted for a while, so it’s good that I’ve got something to talk about.

Went to see Donnie Darko again last night with a couple of friends, the Picturehouse has it on for another week due to popular demand. It doesn’t make much more sense the second time around, see my previous entry for my thoughts then.

Don’t read on unless you’ve seen the film
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Went to see it last night, ended up going to the 11pm showing because all the others were fully booked. This meant it didn’t end until after 2am.

It was worth it though, great battles, fantastic photography and good acting combined to make it a very enjoyable experience. The computer graphics were so good that it was close to impossible to spot them (unlike, for example, Titanic).

I’m struggling to think of bad points. Friends have mentioned that they disliked the way Gimli was made into a comic character, but I think that works well in the context of the film.

OK, I’m a bit late with this one. I went to see Bowling for Columbine yesterday and was impressed. I had expected an anti-gun humorous tirade but instead it was an often funny exploration of why it is that Americans shoot each other so often.

Bits of it were also intensely sad, whoever is shot and whoever is shooting it’s always a waste of life.

The slight conspiracy theory bit surrounding Lockheed Martin seemed a bit out of place but I felt this was more than made up for by the interviews and the South Park style brief history of the USA.

Worth watching but of course the people who need to watch it won’t.

Dancer in the Dark was on on Monday night, unfortunately way past my bedtime so I videoed it and watched it last night.

It’s very odd.

Björk’s accent is especially weird, she sounded more English than Czech to me. It’s also very emotional, I really felt for her character by the end. I was almost screaming at the TV every time Selma kept digging herself into deeper trouble.

So, not as bad as I had been led to believe. Could have been a bit shorter but I couldn’t stop watching because I had to see what happened to Selma.

Went to see Evil Dead at the Picturehouse last night, it’s another film I had never seen in full before. The acting’s terrible, the dialogue is laughable but it’s still very scary.

Went to see Morvern Callar last night, it was fairly good but somehow disappointing. It missed out a lot of the humour surrounding the town where she lives but does well in not trying to explain why Morvern does things.

One of the strengths of the book was that although it was written in the first person there’s never any explanation of Morvern’s motivations, she just does things. Samantha Morton is very good as Morvern, looking vulnerable and out of place.

Maybe I was just grumpy due to sitting in the cinema in very wet trousers. I got caught in a sudden downpour crossing the railway bridge on Mill Road.

Just saw Donnie Darko, another not-very-cheerful film.

I’m not entirely sure what happened in the film, which I suppose is how you’re supposed to feel at the end. It mixes up so many different types of film: 80’s high school, dark teen angst, X-Files weirdness…

Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie is convincingly confused and angry. It’s not all dark though, the occasional outbursts of humour brighten up the film when it’s in danger of becoming too miserable.

(don’t read the rest of this post unless you’ve seen the film)
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