Filmography
Sep. 30th, 2012 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilySucker Punch
I mainly wanted to watch this because of critical interest in where it was going to fit into the whole young-women-discovering-themselves-through-crisis thing that's been going on in cinema recently - the major examples are Pan's Labyrinth and Mirrormask, and of course the trope goes all the way back to Labyrinth. The problem with Sucker Punch is that it turns internal journey of self-discovery into voyeuristic techno-porn. The story-line is reasonably coherent - a young woman is traumatised by her mother's death and step-father's abuse, accidentally kills her sister in an attempt to defend her from said step-father, and ends up in a lunatic asylum where step-father wants to get her out of the way so he can inherit the mother's property. Young woman then proceeds to drop into deeper and deeper levels of her consciousness to ignore this and to tell herself a story that lets herself escape from the institution. It's a shame that the first level of escape takes the form of a mob-run strip club, and the second level, although different in manifestation each time, is a big fantasy game shoot-'em-up. The special effects are awesome the first time and pretty cool the second, but it gets tired after that.
You also lose the sense of personal internal journey and development that previous films of this sort have - there is no chance for redemption, escape or growth. We more or less know this from the very beginning of the film, which is a problem. Plus, as I say, the visuals are the candy here, and they are very much the focus of the film's direction - to which the young women ultimately are subservient. Quite disappointing, especially given that there was a lot more potential for exploring the idea and the first half hour was promising. Two and a half stars.
Parade's End
I'm including this because I've invested time in watching it and I reckon it deserves to be recorded. An interesting adaptation; although I've not read the novels it's based on, you can see some of the joins, and I do fancy seeing what's behind this eventually (rather like The Camomile Lawn). Benedict Cumberbatch does a great job as an up-tight aristocrat watching the world around him crumble and being forced along with it. It feels like a nice observation of manners and so forth, although I will admit that some of the dialogue is ruddy awful, and the pace rather collapsed around the second and third episodes, only to pick up as the series neared its end. But worth watching all the same.
Looper
The main saving grace of this is that we watched it in Birmingham's Electric Cinema, the oldest working cinema in the UK, which has sofas and snacks and a bar, and the experience of watching it was jolly pleasant.
The film itself... first of all, MASSIVE diversity fail. No characters of colour, at least, none who spoke. Women as either mothers or whores, and sometimes both just for a bit of variety. A deliberate 'don't think about the time travel logic, PLEASE don't think about the time travel logic!' steer which, frankly, demonstrates the directors knew they'd been sold a wonky number and were trying to defuse the problem. Fetishising and orientalism a-go-go. Complete moral unlikeableness, and major character inconsistencies - the closing 'solution' simply didn't ring true given everything else that the film had set up about the main protagonist. Bruce Willis.
Looper has been sold as the next Inception. It really, really isn't. It could have been - it's a great idea, and it obviously had potential. It's just that potential hasn't translated into making an actual film. Again, two and a half stars.
I mainly wanted to watch this because of critical interest in where it was going to fit into the whole young-women-discovering-themselves-through-crisis thing that's been going on in cinema recently - the major examples are Pan's Labyrinth and Mirrormask, and of course the trope goes all the way back to Labyrinth. The problem with Sucker Punch is that it turns internal journey of self-discovery into voyeuristic techno-porn. The story-line is reasonably coherent - a young woman is traumatised by her mother's death and step-father's abuse, accidentally kills her sister in an attempt to defend her from said step-father, and ends up in a lunatic asylum where step-father wants to get her out of the way so he can inherit the mother's property. Young woman then proceeds to drop into deeper and deeper levels of her consciousness to ignore this and to tell herself a story that lets herself escape from the institution. It's a shame that the first level of escape takes the form of a mob-run strip club, and the second level, although different in manifestation each time, is a big fantasy game shoot-'em-up. The special effects are awesome the first time and pretty cool the second, but it gets tired after that.
You also lose the sense of personal internal journey and development that previous films of this sort have - there is no chance for redemption, escape or growth. We more or less know this from the very beginning of the film, which is a problem. Plus, as I say, the visuals are the candy here, and they are very much the focus of the film's direction - to which the young women ultimately are subservient. Quite disappointing, especially given that there was a lot more potential for exploring the idea and the first half hour was promising. Two and a half stars.
Parade's End
I'm including this because I've invested time in watching it and I reckon it deserves to be recorded. An interesting adaptation; although I've not read the novels it's based on, you can see some of the joins, and I do fancy seeing what's behind this eventually (rather like The Camomile Lawn). Benedict Cumberbatch does a great job as an up-tight aristocrat watching the world around him crumble and being forced along with it. It feels like a nice observation of manners and so forth, although I will admit that some of the dialogue is ruddy awful, and the pace rather collapsed around the second and third episodes, only to pick up as the series neared its end. But worth watching all the same.
Looper
The main saving grace of this is that we watched it in Birmingham's Electric Cinema, the oldest working cinema in the UK, which has sofas and snacks and a bar, and the experience of watching it was jolly pleasant.
The film itself... first of all, MASSIVE diversity fail. No characters of colour, at least, none who spoke. Women as either mothers or whores, and sometimes both just for a bit of variety. A deliberate 'don't think about the time travel logic, PLEASE don't think about the time travel logic!' steer which, frankly, demonstrates the directors knew they'd been sold a wonky number and were trying to defuse the problem. Fetishising and orientalism a-go-go. Complete moral unlikeableness, and major character inconsistencies - the closing 'solution' simply didn't ring true given everything else that the film had set up about the main protagonist. Bruce Willis.
Looper has been sold as the next Inception. It really, really isn't. It could have been - it's a great idea, and it obviously had potential. It's just that potential hasn't translated into making an actual film. Again, two and a half stars.
