Director – Paul W.S. Anderson
Starring – Milla Jovovich, Orlando Bloom, Logan Lerman and Juno Temple
Cinema Releases: March 25, 2011
Faster
Director: George Tillman Jr.
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton and Maggie Grace
Country Strong
Director: Shana Feste
Starring – Garrett Hedlund, Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim McGraw
Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Werner Herzog, Dominique Baffier and Jean Clottes
Wake Wood
Director: David Keating
Starring: Eva Birthistle, Ella Connolly and Amelia Crowley
A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures
Director: Ben Stassen
Starring: Melanie Griffith, Isabelle Fuhrman and Yuri Lowenthal
Review: Unknown (2011)
Loosely based on Didier van Cauwelaert’s novel Out Of My Head, Unknown is an action-thriller from director Jaume Collet-Serra.
Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) awakens after a car accident in Berlin to discover that his wife (January Jones) suddenly doesn’t recognise him, and another man (Aidan Quinn) has assumed his identity.
Ignored by disbelieving authorities and hunted by mysterious assassins, he finds himself alone, tired and on the run.
Aided by an unlikely ally (Diane Kruger), Martin plunges headlong into a deadly mystery that will force him to question his sanity, his identity, and just how far he’s willing to go to uncover the truth.
In many ways the plotline is reminiscent of many recent thrillers, although not identical. It’s certainly infeasible to call Unknown an original entry into the fickle genre, but the script harbours enough twists and thrills to stop it being labelled a complete failure.
The same, however, can’t be said for the dialogue and delivery, which are both somewhat lacklustre in comparison.
On a positive note, the action scenes are excellently filmed by Collet-Serra, especially the superb car chases through the iconic streets of Berlin – entertaining to watch, but too generic to really matter.
Much of the cinematography remains squarely in the gray-blue territory which, along with the overblown colours used in the flashback scenes, is a choice that sometimes makes the action seem a little bewildering and uninspired for such an intriguing premise.
The acting, although a little exaggerated at times, is adequate enough, with steadfast turns from Kruger and Jones. Neeson, on the other hand, is a disappointment, reducing Martin to a irksome, uninteresting character. His performance here is almost exactly the same as the one he delivered in Taken.
Unknown is a humdrum, implausible and clunky action-thriller, with mediocre performances and direction.
Trailer: Captain America: The First Avenger
Director – Joe Johnston
Starring – Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones and Hayley Atwell
Trailer: Last Night
Director – Massy Tadjedin
Starring – Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes and Guillaume Canet
Poster: Last Night
Director – Massy Tadjedin
Starring – Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes and Guillaume Canet
Review: Limitless (2011)
Directed by Neil Burger, Limitless is a techno-thriller based on the Alan Glynn novel: The Dark Fields.
A copywriter, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), discovers a top-secret drug which bestows him with super-human abilities. As his usage begins to change his life, he starts to consider the drugs shadowy origins. Meanwhile, a group of killers follow his every move.
This premise is very interesting and, while far-fetched, touches upon some pretty serious issues – the most important being drug usage and addiction. This helps keep the somewhat implausible scenario grounded.
However, despite effectively letting the audience bring their own experiences to the table, none of the issues are wrapped up in a clear and dignified manner, and are often skimmed over with an irritating level of disregard.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as, along with Cooper’s tongue-in-cheek performance, the narrative manages to remain simplistic enough throughout, never taking itself too seriously. It’s only in the final act, where all the loose ends are being haphazardly pieced together, that the cracks are exposed.
Similarly, characters are introduced left, right and centre – and disposed of almost as quickly. Understandably, the film is too short to explore everyone’s backstories, but certain people – such as Anna Friel’s Melissa and Abbie Cornish’s Lindy – are too fascinating to be so brazenly wasted.
Burger is clearly an extremely talented filmmaker. He creates a very stylized, visually intriguing world: a dimension that wonderfully emphasizes what the characters experience when ingesting the harmless-looking NZT-48 pill.
Cooper embodies Eddie perfectly, continuing his growth as a very adept actor. There’s something enthralling in his impoverished style that makes him wholly appealing, and the ideal choice for the role.
Eddie’s first-person narration, with its deliriously fast pace, not only compliments the visual side effects of the pill, but also offers a smart insight into the serious impacts drug-taking can have on an individuals lifecycle.
Robert De Niro delivers a solid turn as businessman Carl Van Loon, but feels an odd fit for such a under-developed and audacious character.
Abbie Cornish and Johnny Whitworth are believable enough in their respective roles, and Anna Friel brings an oddly likable, honest and raw nature to Eddie’s ex-wife. Nevertheless, none are employed as much as their talents demand.
Limitless, on the whole, is harmless entertainment and, at 105 minutes, offers a pleasant enough distraction, even managing to pose some meaningful, thought-provoking questions along the way.
Poster: Passion Play
Director – Mitch Glazer
Starring – Megan Fox, Bill Murray, Mickey Rourke and Rhys Ifans
Review: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger
You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, writer/director Woody Allen’s fortieth feature film, is tale of chicanery, infatuation and disappointment, and reunites one of the world’s best directors with the beautiful city of London.
The film follows a pair of married couples, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones), and their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and husband Roy (Josh Brolin), as their passions, ambitions, and anxieties lead them into trouble and out of their minds.
After Alfie leaves Helena to pursue his lost youth and a free-spirited call girl named Charmaine (Lucy Punch), Helena abandons rationality and surrenders her life to the loopy advice of a charlatan fortune teller.
Unhappy in her marriage, Sally develops a crush on her handsome art gallery owner boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas), while Roy, a novelist nervously awaiting the response to his latest manuscript, becomes moonstruck over Dia (Freida Pinto), a mystery woman who catches his gaze through a nearby window.
Though not Allen’s strongest material, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger still has a solid story, blending the ups and downs of each relationship, and highlighting the hypocrisies of marriage. Allen clearly still has a way of letting his stories unfold in an eloquent and timely manner.
Through the unstable characters’ troubled relationships, Allen not only examines how people deal with mortality but also how we cope with life, love and existence in general.
The film, however many life-altering questions it brings up, ends just when complications set in, which not only makes you wonder how invested Allen really is with the characters’ lives, but also makes it harder to empathise with their troubled being.
The characters, from Jones’ Helena neurotic to Brolin’s anguished Roy, feel more like puppets rather than human beings with natural instincts, human emotions and comprehensible senses. They all come over as extremely egocentric and have little to offer in the way of benevolence to their counterparts.
Jones leads the cast perfectly with her portrayal of Helena. Watts, Brolin and Hopkins fail to break free of their limited dialogue and uncoloured characters, and, the shamefully wasted trio of Punch, Friel and Banderas who, despite having the most interesting on-screen personaes, are not given enough time to thrive amongst their equally underused counterparts.
While the acting isn’t up to the heights of Vicky Christina Barcelona, Annie Hall or even Match Point, it’s impressively low key enough to be a joy to watch.
You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger is by no means Allen’s best film, but it’s also not his worst. It’s well-plotted, beautifully directed, contains some mildy humorous moments and isn’t short of talented actors.
It’s irritating, then, that it’s let down so wrongly by glorified scenery, under-developed characters and a script that seems to foolishly avoid dramatic impact.
Poster: Super
Director – James Gunn
Starring – Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon
Empty Screens 