Intro
So this week has been pretty newsworthy. And in order to avoid becoming a target for Al-Quaeda and steering clear of a possible international political situation The Cutting Room Floor will be making no comment on the whole Bin-Laden assassination. Instead another event occurred this week that will no doubt have Hollywood’s finest (and worst) screenwriters scribbling and typing away trying to drum up a script to commemorate the occasion. I talk of course of the royal wedding.
Now The Cutting Room Floor is a fragile little flower and can get a little emotional watching films from time to time. But after a tear in the eye watching the royal wedding it became clear I needed to man up and quickly. So on Saturday I decided that Fast Five would be this blogs focus for the review and in terms of a testosterone pumped spectacular it didn’t disappoint. I had to be careful driving my car after so not to get too carried away imagining I was still in the film. Although driving to Morrison’s in my Yaris isn’t quite as glamorous as having a street race with Vin Diesel.
Enjoy this movie blog like I am sure you have been enjoying the weather, the good news and the above average films on offer at the moment at the cinema and may all your dreams come true!
Preeeview
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Oh my! Excited much?! This has to be the most eagerly anticipated of the summer blockbusters (except Harry Potter I know I know). He’s back and yes he’s ditched his boring fellow cast members and embarked on a prequel. This time Jack is searching for the fountain of youth and will have many a foe looking to stop him as usual. The trailer looks like stepping back in time has given this franchise a new lease of life and could see it surpass all of its predecessors. Expectation will be high and as mentioned before in this blog it can be a heavy burden to carry and many films buckle under the weight.
Is he wheel-y back? Yes he's wheel-y back!
The cast looks exciting. Gone are the dreary Keira Knightley and the wooden Orlando Bloom who’d be better at playing a pirates peg leg than an actual human with emotions. I mean did anyone even care what happened to them in the other films? Letting Captain Jack Sparrow take centre stage seems like the smartest move this film will take, and of course the role that made Depp the best character actor of his generation is the one we all want to see him in, and lots of him, not as a side story to a soppy romance. And what’s this, Penelope Cruz? Great choice not only have her and Depp had great on screen chemistry before in Blow but she is feisty, beautiful and seems so suited to this kind of thing that it’s a wonder it has taken this long for anyone to put her in a Pirates of the Caribbean film.
So wash the poop deck, man the rigging, hoist the sails and let’s set sail for adventure. Estimated arrival time if the seas be fair 18th May.
Reeeview
Cinema
Fast Five
Thierry Henry is always asking, “What is Va va voom?” Well Thierry I can tell you what it is, it’s Fast Five. Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and loads more are back and throw the Rock in and things are really kicking up a notch. Harry Potter aside for the fifth film in the Fast and the Furious franchise this has been an unprecedented success. It went straight to number one on the opening weekend in America and the UK and has grossed the most money this year so far. No mean feat although sure to be eclipsed by Pirates, Transformers and of course Harry Potter as the summer goes on.
My interest in the series waned after the second film due to the straight to DVD vibe I got from Tokyo Drift. And I have in fact not even seen the fourth film but it was unnecessary in order to enjoy this. Set entirely in Rio de Janeiro the gang has a new stomping ground and even though they are on the wrong side of the law the gangster they are up against is so mean and greedy we never feel bad about rooting for them. This film feels like Ocean’s Eleven and the Italian Job meet Fast and the Furious and the sense of fun of those films is there throughout.
C'mon big huggy wuggy?
Special mention has to go to The Rock (sorry Dwayne Johnson if you prefer but he’ll always be the rock to me). And can you smell what he is cooking? Well I can tell you it’s a right storm of a testosterone pumped cop that he is whipping up. He plays the leader of an elite law enforcement unit (think Dog The Bounty Hunter with huge machine guns) that are looking to track down Vin Diesel et al. Anyway he steals the show in his scenes and its lucky as there is one scene when Vin Diesel is asked to really act at an emotional bit and I nearly burst into laughter it was so bad.
This film seems to have taken the sense of action and focused on constructing a decent story based on the parts of the franchise already in existence. This film unlike its predecessors feels less like an excuse to watch cars race and instead is more of a heist movie with some good stories in place. And just like when you’re in top gear and you think you can’t go any faster but then you hit the Nitrous Oxide and give your horse power a boost this film takes an already insane action sequence and seems to find more to get out of it. This won’t rewrite film making but boy is it fun!
Thor
Marvel are busy little bees this year with the release of three high profile big budget summer blockbusters being released over the period of only a few months, the first of which being Thor. The Iron Man franchise showed that even the lesser known comic book heroes can command huge box office takings and so emboldened by this Marvel are keeping them rolling off the production line with an ultimate goal of uniting most of their main characters for an Avengers movie. A certain mister Samuel L. Jackson has signed a contract for 9 films in which he has appeared in a few already making this rumour more concrete with each films release.
But I digress; Thor is a film harking back to the mMsters of the Universe times with huge warriors wielding primitive weapons from different dimensions. Now at first the elaborate and lavish world of Asgard and the Earth in which the other half of the film is set look like they could be too different and make parts of the film look slightly ridiculous. There were parts in which I thought if someone just came in now they would probably laugh at what they were seeing (especially at the Frost Giants who look more like a cartoon on a cereal box than a truly menacing enemy). However the crossover between Asgard and Earth where Thor gets banished too is handled in good humour and a few gags and snappy dialogue go a long way to bridging the gap between the worlds and keeping the audience onside.
Well I'm not disagreeing with ya buddy!
The Cutting Room Floor had an option; he could pay the extra and see the film in 3D or just in the usual format for cheaper. Now some may decide I’m a cheapskate and they are entitled to their opinion but I’m afraid I just don’t believe in 3D and in fact think it’s killing the blockbuster at the moment while filmmakers get to grips with how to use it and maintain an emotional and exciting story (Toy Story 3 being the exception). So 2D it was and it had to be noted this film is heavy on the effects and some of the concept designs and art for Asgard were spectacular and looked brilliant. There were a few shots however in which the effects looked a little shoddy and this may be due to Marvels heavy commitment to films this summer some sacrifices had to be made.
On the whole though this was an enjoyable comic book film that had the audience encountering a hero and story that many would have been unfamiliar with rather than yet another Batman or Superman. It is also worth noting I took someone deeply sceptical about this film with me and they enjoyed it too.
Rest on offer…
So I didn’t get to the cinema much in recent weeks and this has to be seen as a fundamental flaw in my movie blog plan. However people have been good enough to talk to me about films they have seen and from what I’ve read here are a few verdicts without going to the cinema myself:
Limitless
A good idea and one that I was excited to see from the trailer but didn’t get the opportunity to. I’ve been told that the start was enjoyable but the film didn’t really lead to much and was disappointing for that reason.
Scream 4
Mixed reviews probably due to people’s different expectation levels prior to viewing. I’ve been told that it was scary in a fun way but also told that the film was a let-down but they have been folding too higher expectations of the Scream franchise.
Source Code
A very decent action film with a bit of a twist at the end. Seems like a good one for DVD viewing in future.
DVD/Blu-Ray
Tron: Legacy
When The Cutting Room Floor was growing up I liked space ships and futuristic looking things and this film got me so giddy at its very mention of release that I remembered how I felt to be a very little boy once again. Now I think this is the key to some of the films that will live on longest in our hearts. Of course if you had a disturbing childhood that theory is blown right of the water but I had a nice one and I remember watching the first Tron film when I was little on the TV.
A film that rewrote the rule book on visual effects and did so in such a way that it has to be said it was a film made as an excuse to show these efforts off and had a rather skeletal storyline that needed a lot of fleshing out. But hey who wants that when you can make something that looks that good especially when it was made on computers with less memory than most of our iPods we carry around today. Like making Noah’s Ark out of matches or something equivalent it must have been painstaking but was spectacular. Disney has poured so much money into this update of the franchise that it’s hard to imagine that they would ever see a profit yet the budget of $170 million has been surpassed by its global cinema takings of over $390 million.
Lets play a love game play a love game... i mean lets play a deadly game with discs in a digital world!
So does it look as radical as its predecessor? I’m afraid not, it’s not as far ahead of the times as Tron was back in the day but it looks fantastic and does so better on Blu-Ray at home than it did in 3D at the cinema (the Cutting Room Floor Movie Blog is very sceptical about 3D).But by gosh the effects are jaw dropping and geeks like me will be in heaven. I’m afraid if you’re not a geek however there isn’t much there for you.
Special mention has to go to Olivia Wilde in this film, previously of The OC and House. She plays Cora a naïve inhabitant of the digital world called the grid. Although it’s hard to believe she is naïve to her own sex appeal in her skin tight leather, however she is a highlight in terms of the characters. The decision to create a completely digital Jeff Bridges was bold and works most of the time apart from when he gets extra angry and needs more expression in the area around his mouth and that’s unfortunately when you are reminded that he is a digital creation rather than suspending the audience’s disbelief.
In the last blog I mentioned that Suckerpunch looked good and likened it to being in a relationship with someone so beautiful yet so boring. Tron: Legacy has to be considered a similar situation but if my girlfriend looked as good as this film does, I think I’d let it slide.
Batman
All hail Tim Burton but also Frank Miller for his work in bringing Batman to us in the dark and moody packaging we see him in today. The Dark Knight plucked from the camp Adam West (love you in family guy Adam) era and now it’s hard for us to imagine Bruce Wayne’s alter ego in any other way.
Burton inspired by the graphic novels of Frank Miller showing Batman and his foes in a much darker light brings the first serious portrayal of this beloved comic book hero to the screens and succeeds brilliantly. Mixing Film Noir with the comics mythology means that Gotham has as big a part to play as any character and causes the main protagonist to feel trapped within the city limits, feeling a debt needs to be paid to his murdered parents and the people of Gotham for his own vigilante crime fighting methods that have in this films case spawned the Joker and many more insane criminals to come.
So Bats I'm available for kids parties, bar-mitzvahs etc etc
It is a credit to Heath Ledger that he surpasses the Joker of Jack Nicholson in the Dark Knight as I always thought him to be one of the best portrayed villains in not just the Batman series but of all comic book films. There are small elements of the camp in this film that our ultra-gritty and realistic action films of today would not tolerate but as a comic book film in the 80’s this paved the way for a darker and more mature audience to enjoy comic book adaptations.
Odd Bins
Royal Wedding Film
The yanks don’t miss a trick! Check out this straight to DVD release filmed in America with an entirely American cast doing British accents. I’m sure the Americans will gobble this tripe up but I have faith in us Brits and hope that we can all see through this ****! That’s right I said ****!
Soundtrack
Some tracks that I have enjoyed while writing the epic 2'500 words writing this issue lol!
Brandon Flowers- Magdalena
Arctic Monkeys- Don’t Sit Down Cuz I’ve Moved Your Chair
Big Sean feat. Chris Brown- M
