**Gers On Film - Rushes** : A few filums Ive caught up on recently in bite-sized portions. High time I wrote about some more current releases. Here we go. The Fault In Our Stars (2014) - Weepie romances are pretty much a thing of a bygone era, last seen not long after the Grand Poobah of them all , Love Story (1970) spawned a rash of completely inferior copycats. So when one comes along into the mainstream in 2014, it seems unique and out of place. The Fault In Our Stars(TFIOS) however, had the major advantage of being a best-selling novel (by John Green) with an in-built audience. That, however, is a double-edged sword - with expectations and pressures from fans to get the book right placed unwillingly on the filmmakers. They neednt have worried. Thanks to a couple of outstanding performances from Shailene Woodley & Ansel Elgort (what a name!), TFIOS is a quality adaptation. Even though its obvious to almost anyone where the story will travel to, the performances and script are winning enough to ensure as decent a couple of hours you could possibly spend with cancer-ridden teenagers. 7/10 Snowpiercer (2013) - (South) Korean director Bong Joon-Ho has made some ripper films in his homeland and now makes the leap to the U.S. market with Snowpiercer. Its been a rocky road for Asian filmmakers attempting to transfer their skills to Hollywood system over the years, but due to Joon-Hos unique voice & style, Snowpiercer is a succesful entry into his filmography. Ostensibly the story is (yet another) post-apocalyptic look into the future where a huge train in perpetual motion holds the very last of humanity in its carriages. The back carriage holds the down-trodden whilst the front carriages contain the elite controllers of this world. So whilst the microcosm of society is at its most obvious as a metaphor, Joon-Hos creative sense is very much on display as we see the world of each carriage as we go along on the mission of central character Chris Evans (in a great performance). A study in set design, the sci-fi nature never gets in the way of an enjoyable - if sometimes bleak - story. Not everything lands perfectly - but at least Joon-Ho sticks to his guns from go-to-whoah. All aboard!! 7/10 The Grandmaster (2013) - Heard of Ip Man before? Hes the guy that was famously the trainer of one Bruce Lee in his formative years before breaking into H-Wood. Ip Mans story has been told before on film as action-heavy slugfests, but independent film darling Wong Kar Wai really emphasises the art in both Martial and Arts in his re-telling of the story in The Grandmaster. Whilst you really get a decent sense of what it was like in the days when Japan and China were at each others throats, Kar Wai ultimately gets caught up in martial arts films genre trappings, breaking up the story now and then to show us a good ol donnybrook between opponents (& proponents) of differing disciplines of combat practices. Shot a little differently, though not altogether more compellingly than most other chop-socky films, Kar Wai brings a little too much intensity to proceedings, getting really up-close and personal with his protagonists in constant tight framings. Of course, when you have the gorgeous Zhang Ziyi in the frame it isnt always a bad thing. By the time I left the theatre, I was a tad exhausted from the forcefulness of the filmmakers style. And THEN I found out that the version I just witnessed was the cut that made the audience work the least! (There are at least 4 different versions of this film going around) 6/10 Jodorowskys Dune (2013) - Ah, the fabled Incomplete/Lost Film. Almost any time you hear/read about a film that almost was, the project is usually couched in terms of how good the project was going to be and how we as an audience was robbed of a cinematic pleasure second-to-none. The documentary Jodorowskys Dune plays on this conceit, writ large. If you arent already familiar, Dune is a 1965 sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert that set many an adventurous film director salivating away with testing the possibilities of imagination. Alejandro Jodorowsky was one such director. Before meeting the man himself onscreen, one look at his filmography would suggest that the man is truly off-the-wall and in a pigeon-hole all his own. The journey from page-to-*almost*-to-the-screen as a story is a little bit Inside Baseball for the general audience but fascinating for the film nerds out there. The film does make a good case for the influence of what was to be, breaking down individuals contributions to the film that made their way eventually into other projects and is relatively even-handed about the version of Dune that DID make its way to screens back in 1984, directed by fellow whack-job David Lynch. One of those rare films that should have one rating for a particular group and another for everyone else. Still, Jodorowsky himself (at the ripe age of 85) is about as entertaining a character as you would find in the best of fiction. 7/10 Chef (2014) - Jon Favreaus Chef is basically one big metaphor for his career as a (Marvel films, anyone?) director. A successful star chef tries to break the mold set by the restaurant owner and eventually finds himself consigned to the sidewalk where he must make his own way - oh yeah and do some bonding with his young son on a road trip. Sounds bland? Yeah, pretty much is. Common-denominator films try to be appealing to everyone (first mistake) but can get lost in translation when multi-millionaire filmmakers attempt to inject their own experiences into proceedings and connect with the average movie-goer (second mistake). When Favreau writes a screenplay that casts himself as the titular character that has BOTH Scarlett Johansson & Sofia Vergara mooning over him, the disconnect is complete. Competently made with great sequences of food preparation that got my taste buds moving my thoughts to the nearest restaurant (3rd mistake) and a killer latin-infused soundtrack, Chef is ultimately like that fast-food you picked up and ate on the way home - you know you went there but cant remember anything about the meal the next day. 5/10
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 04:58:29 +0000
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