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tamaranth1. This Means War (2012), Cineworld, 14.02.12.
Disclaimer: I saw this film because Tom Hardy is in it. And he is very good, easily Best in Show: it's fascinating to see him pull off rom-com as capably as his other recent roles. Also, he clearly had immense fun filming it.
At one point in this film, Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) accuses FDR (Chris Pine) of having "the emotional intelligence of a 15-year-old boy". Noooo! It's the film she's talking about! And seriously, if you view This Means War as a rom-com targetting 15-year-old males, it's a pretty good film: no tedious character development, no backstory, a love interest who wears short skirts and is game for a day's paintballing, a voyeur mentality and some deep-grained sexism.
Though, come to think of it, it might actually pass the Bechdel test.
Anyway, I confess to enjoying it a great deal on a superficial and non-analytic level. Explosions! Tom Hardy! Car chases! Tom Hardy! Action sequences! Tom ...
2. The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (2010), DVD, 18.02.12
There's a steampunk vibe to this movie, though very little in the way of alternate technologies or brass / steam / glass devices. No airships, either. But there is a pterodactyl, a mummy or two and a freak tennis accident.
Paris, 1911: Adele Blanc-Sec is young, but already famed and feted as an archaeologist. Sent by her publishers to Peru to investigate I-forget-what, we first meet her in a desert with the other sort of pyramids: never especially biddable, Adele has a mission of her own that involves robbing a tomb. Cue swashbuckling antics worthy of Indiana Jones. But the fun really starts when she returns to Paris, where a pterodactyl is terrorising the population and driving the police quite mad.
This was immensely good fun, very funny, and nicely constructed. It gets extra points for managing a happy ending that doesn't involve Adele undergoing any personality transplant.
3. L'Atalante (1934), Arts Picturehouse, 19.02.12
This is the France my father grew up in, and he may well have seen this film as a boy. It may even have been an influence: after all, he grew up to be a moderately solitary man who loved messing around in boats, acquiring things that needed fixing, and adopting stray cats. (It's not the protagonist of the film, Jean, who displays these traits: it's the considerably more likeable Pere Jules.)
My father also married my mother and took her away on his boat*, just as Jean, skipper of the barge L'Atalante, weds Juliette and whisks her away from the village where she's lived all her life. She's mad keen to go to Paris, but Jean is fiercely protective (and extremely jealous) and pretty much forbids her to have any fun after she's the target of aggressive flirting from a charming pedlar. Cue heartbreak, and Pere Jules to the rescue.
Charming, and evocative: also a fascinating window into pre-war French cinematography.
* (Not actually in that order.)
Disclaimer: I saw this film because Tom Hardy is in it. And he is very good, easily Best in Show: it's fascinating to see him pull off rom-com as capably as his other recent roles. Also, he clearly had immense fun filming it.
At one point in this film, Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) accuses FDR (Chris Pine) of having "the emotional intelligence of a 15-year-old boy". Noooo! It's the film she's talking about! And seriously, if you view This Means War as a rom-com targetting 15-year-old males, it's a pretty good film: no tedious character development, no backstory, a love interest who wears short skirts and is game for a day's paintballing, a voyeur mentality and some deep-grained sexism.
Though, come to think of it, it might actually pass the Bechdel test.
Anyway, I confess to enjoying it a great deal on a superficial and non-analytic level. Explosions! Tom Hardy! Car chases! Tom Hardy! Action sequences! Tom ...
2. The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (2010), DVD, 18.02.12
There's a steampunk vibe to this movie, though very little in the way of alternate technologies or brass / steam / glass devices. No airships, either. But there is a pterodactyl, a mummy or two and a freak tennis accident.
Paris, 1911: Adele Blanc-Sec is young, but already famed and feted as an archaeologist. Sent by her publishers to Peru to investigate I-forget-what, we first meet her in a desert with the other sort of pyramids: never especially biddable, Adele has a mission of her own that involves robbing a tomb. Cue swashbuckling antics worthy of Indiana Jones. But the fun really starts when she returns to Paris, where a pterodactyl is terrorising the population and driving the police quite mad.
This was immensely good fun, very funny, and nicely constructed. It gets extra points for managing a happy ending that doesn't involve Adele undergoing any personality transplant.
3. L'Atalante (1934), Arts Picturehouse, 19.02.12
This is the France my father grew up in, and he may well have seen this film as a boy. It may even have been an influence: after all, he grew up to be a moderately solitary man who loved messing around in boats, acquiring things that needed fixing, and adopting stray cats. (It's not the protagonist of the film, Jean, who displays these traits: it's the considerably more likeable Pere Jules.)
My father also married my mother and took her away on his boat*, just as Jean, skipper of the barge L'Atalante, weds Juliette and whisks her away from the village where she's lived all her life. She's mad keen to go to Paris, but Jean is fiercely protective (and extremely jealous) and pretty much forbids her to have any fun after she's the target of aggressive flirting from a charming pedlar. Cue heartbreak, and Pere Jules to the rescue.
Charming, and evocative: also a fascinating window into pre-war French cinematography.
* (Not actually in that order.)
