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LXXI: District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009)
To my mind, the problems with this film are those of genre recognition. It's an allegory about race, set in South Africa, which has a certain degree of irony, and it risks being dismissed as racist. Clearly the characters demonstrate racism: the alien refugees that are cowering in camps outside Johannesburg are treated abominably, referred to as prawns, and are about to be cleared. The film allows us to empathise with some of the aliens, especially the parent (assumed to be a father as he is called Christopher, but we don't kn ow the details of alien sex roles) of an alien child, so that we re critical of the attitudes. The footage is sufficiently reminiscent of news footage of security operations to make the viewer uncomfortable (although some might see the forces of law and order doing there job). The ambiguous protagonist, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is a man promoted beyond his skills due to a well-placed father in law, and his initial, comic, performance makes him easy to dislike. Then again, he gets a shot of redemption. The white guy saves the subservient race. Meanwhile, both aliens and Nigerians need subtitles and white characters don't.
I didn't remember District Six, a South African district cleared to make way for a whites only accommodation, a fourteen year period of forced relocation which ended at the year at which the alien ship arrives in the film. Depiction of racism doesn't make the film racist. Added to this there is a sense that this is still an era of apartheid, an alternate history, where Nelson Mandela never became president. And yet the Nigerians didn't need to be subtitled.
Paradoxically the film's use of the tropes of documentary make it more difficult to justify. For what, the first half hour, the film purports to be an historical documentary, recounting the events of a crisis, and the agenda of those film makers might aid us deal with the tone of the film itself. But the frame is broken - by cutting to Christopher - and then lost all together in favour of action sequences, before the frame is restored. I think it would have been a stronger film had it stayed purer, but it leaves me a little uncomfortable.
LXXII: The Boat that Rocked (Richard Curtis, 2009)
Don't. Just don't. For the love of all that's holy.
Not since Magnolia - which also featured Phillip Seymour Hoffman, has a director cast so much talent and wasted it. In fact the talent is probably the problem - as Chris O'Dowd, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Hoffman are so adept at stealing the scene from under other actors' noses that the ensemble is rocked.
Some kid is sent by his mother to a pirate radio ship, just as the government (in the shape of Home Secretary Kenneth Branagh and his assistant Jack Davenport) plan to close it down. Davenport's character is a bit of a twat. This is clear because he is indeed called Twatt. It turns out there's really a reason why the kid is there, but what he's up to whilst he's there - aside from falling in love - isn't clear.
And then once you really think it's about due the film finished, the kid having completed an emotional journey by turning into a Hugh Grant stuttering impersonation, an reenactment of Titanic is thrown at us, and the two hour mark eventually sails by and is left in the wake.
You can see the star turns being chalked up and the emotional levers being pulled - and there's the American for the American market (male for once), and there's a token Black (not the white wash of Notting Hill) and there's the token gay (a lesbian this time). But I frankly just didn't care.
Totals: 72 - [Cinema: 21; DVD: 48; Television: 3]
To my mind, the problems with this film are those of genre recognition. It's an allegory about race, set in South Africa, which has a certain degree of irony, and it risks being dismissed as racist. Clearly the characters demonstrate racism: the alien refugees that are cowering in camps outside Johannesburg are treated abominably, referred to as prawns, and are about to be cleared. The film allows us to empathise with some of the aliens, especially the parent (assumed to be a father as he is called Christopher, but we don't kn ow the details of alien sex roles) of an alien child, so that we re critical of the attitudes. The footage is sufficiently reminiscent of news footage of security operations to make the viewer uncomfortable (although some might see the forces of law and order doing there job). The ambiguous protagonist, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is a man promoted beyond his skills due to a well-placed father in law, and his initial, comic, performance makes him easy to dislike. Then again, he gets a shot of redemption. The white guy saves the subservient race. Meanwhile, both aliens and Nigerians need subtitles and white characters don't.
I didn't remember District Six, a South African district cleared to make way for a whites only accommodation, a fourteen year period of forced relocation which ended at the year at which the alien ship arrives in the film. Depiction of racism doesn't make the film racist. Added to this there is a sense that this is still an era of apartheid, an alternate history, where Nelson Mandela never became president. And yet the Nigerians didn't need to be subtitled.
Paradoxically the film's use of the tropes of documentary make it more difficult to justify. For what, the first half hour, the film purports to be an historical documentary, recounting the events of a crisis, and the agenda of those film makers might aid us deal with the tone of the film itself. But the frame is broken - by cutting to Christopher - and then lost all together in favour of action sequences, before the frame is restored. I think it would have been a stronger film had it stayed purer, but it leaves me a little uncomfortable.
LXXII: The Boat that Rocked (Richard Curtis, 2009)
Don't. Just don't. For the love of all that's holy.
Not since Magnolia - which also featured Phillip Seymour Hoffman, has a director cast so much talent and wasted it. In fact the talent is probably the problem - as Chris O'Dowd, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Hoffman are so adept at stealing the scene from under other actors' noses that the ensemble is rocked.
Some kid is sent by his mother to a pirate radio ship, just as the government (in the shape of Home Secretary Kenneth Branagh and his assistant Jack Davenport) plan to close it down. Davenport's character is a bit of a twat. This is clear because he is indeed called Twatt. It turns out there's really a reason why the kid is there, but what he's up to whilst he's there - aside from falling in love - isn't clear.
And then once you really think it's about due the film finished, the kid having completed an emotional journey by turning into a Hugh Grant stuttering impersonation, an reenactment of Titanic is thrown at us, and the two hour mark eventually sails by and is left in the wake.
You can see the star turns being chalked up and the emotional levers being pulled - and there's the American for the American market (male for once), and there's a token Black (not the white wash of Notting Hill) and there's the token gay (a lesbian this time). But I frankly just didn't care.
Totals: 72 - [Cinema: 21; DVD: 48; Television: 3]
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