This looks awesome...

Body of Lies. It's Ridley Scott's latest film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Watch the trailer here.

DiCap (if I may call him that) is one of the best screen actors around at the moment. He's been awesome in everything since Catch Me If You Can, particularly awesome in Blood Diamond. Russell Crowe is always good value so it looks promising, based on the casting alone.

Ridley Scott is one of my favourite directors. He seems quite happy to try his hand at any genre - he's made great sci-fi (Blade Runner, Alien), 'historical fiction' shall we say (Gladiator, The Duellists, Kingdom of Heaven. Actually that last one wasn't so great), gritty, true-story dramas (Black Hawk Down, American Gangster), even a romantic comedy (A Good Year, which I haven't seen yet but I've heard it's a bit crap).

Body of Lies is a 'relevant' political thriller, based on a novel by David Ignatius. DiCaprio plays a former journalist, hired by the CIA (Big Russ pops up here, I'm guessing) to track down an Al Qaeda leader in the Middle East. It looks super exciting.

The people involved in this film are certainly capable of great things, so I hope they deliver the goods!

It's scheduled to be released on the 9th of October.

American Gangster

I just love films about crime/gangsters. I guess it's an ingredient for instant drama and mystery. Also, there's so much to explore in the criminal world, it's almost impossible to make a dry gangster film. I also love Ridley Scott (well I love his style of film making and I like most of his films), so I was pretty excited to watch American Gangster.

Set in late 60s/early 70s New York, it's an epic film that explores the ambiguity of good vs bad. Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas; a smooth, drug smuggling, Tony Montana-esque ganster that has built an empire on cocaine, partly so that he can share his wealth with his mother and to overcompensate for his poor Southern upbringing. Det. Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe) is a devoted, honest cop whose followed around by his reputation for turning in a million dollars instead of pocketing it. Crowe's character follows a very tried and tested formula - policeman that's ostracised by his corrupt colleagues and divorced by his wife for being "married to the job". It is a true story, so I guess this can be overlooked.

The story follows Ritchie Roberts' attempts to clean up the city and bring down the people responsible for its mess (including Frank Lucas). It is very compelling and the sets are convincing and gritty, but I don't think it will ever be seen as a classic. It just has a few too many flaws. I wasn't totally convinced by Denzel's gangster. I know it's based on true events and the point is that he's not completely evil, but I still felt he had too many contradictions. He didn't seem ruthless enough to have built such a fortune for himself, nor intimidating enough to be a feared gangster. Another problem I had - although it's a powerful film, for some reason it isn't a memorable film. There weren't any scenes that stayed with me, and I think that's an important aspect of this of this type of film. Despite this, it still manages to be very exciting and it does suck you into its world. It's a very worthy addition to the crime genre.

4 Stars

Death at a Funeral

A pretty funny, farcical British comedy. Some of it I found hilarious, some of it didn't quite hit the mark. I reckon this type of comedy would be quite hard to write; you need to give the audience the impression that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong" without being too obvious in setting up these scenes. It worked really well in Meet The Parents and it's effortlessly pulled off in Clockwise (and of course, Fawlty Towers), but in Death at a Funeral, there were scenes that just seemed to try a bit too hard. Having said that, I laughed a lot during it, particularly any scene involving Uncle Alfie or the midget. One of this film's strengths is its characters; they're believable enough to make me laugh, even if the scenario they're involved in is totally absurd.

3 Stars

The Dark Knight

This was incredibly gripping. It had me hooked for the full 2.5 hours. The story is very well crafted, with so many twists and turns; I completely bought into it. Relentless intensity.

Heath Ledger's joker is brilliant; easily his best performance. He's one of the most chilling villains to be filmed in a long time, not just a comic book bad guy but a true, multi layered psychopath. I love that they made the Joker genuinely clever; he totally outwitted Batman and the police (the escape from prison was ingenious and the magic trick with the pen... how cool was that?!). What's more, I liked it that Batman did not understand the Joker, that he underestimated him. There was no sense of inevitability that Batman was going to come out on top; this was never the case in Tim Burton's Batman (which I also like).

The corruption and general seediness of Gotham adds a really interesting dimension to these new Batman films (obviously it's in all the films but explored much further in the latest ones). It really feels like a crime drama/thriller more than a superhero movie. It actually reminded me a lot of Heat.

One thing that wasn't so good: Batman takes a back seat in this one. They undid a lot of the really interesting character development that occurred in Batman Begins, by having him seemingly go through the motions. Another mild criticism I had was that the fall of Harvey Dent/Two-Face into evil seemed very rushed. I found it hard to believe that would happen so suddenly. Perhaps they could have extended it into the next film? Aaron Eckhart was very good though, and I was glad to see Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman get more screen time in this one. I think Christopher Nolan is the perfect director for these films; he's such an enigmatic storyteller and he handles action sequences so well. Can't wait for the next one!

4 stars

Children of Men

I enjoyed this. Most futuristic, sci-fi (I'm not sure if Children of Men is sci-fi... don't think so), apocalyptic thrillers are fine with me. There are some quite intense scenes that are really well filmed. Alfonso Cuarón is an impressive filmmaker, at least, from what I've seen of his films so far (his Harry Potter film is the best in that series by a long way, I think). Clive Owen is pretty good in this, in fact all of the acting is top-notch.

It all seems a bit hollow though. We have Clive's character trying to get a pregnant woman to a mysterious scientific project ship, because the world is in complete disarray, due to the inability of having children. And there is a freedom fighting/terrorist organisation that have rather vague motives. Not much is really explained at all, and this means the film is just 110 minutes of action with a couple of forced philosophical moments that miss the mark. I don't mind ambiguity as a storytelling method, if it actually works, but I don't think it does here. Maybe I just need to watch it again.

That said, it is a really exciting, visually stunning film and a lot of people seem to like it.

3 Stars.

New Blog

I'm pretty pumped for movies at the moment so I decided to start a movie blog. Expect to find reviews, lists and rants.