As ever this week see some good and some bad and even one complete and utter dog’s dinner…
10,000 BC is terrible. Oh my word it is terrible. In fact, I imagine if I was eleven (the age group that I assume this must be aimed at) I would be saying exactly the same thing. Okay, so it makes no sense – not a problem, I don’t care if man did or did not exist in along side certain creatures or what period agriculture / pyramids etc first appeared. Action and spectacle is what I am after and that is e
xactly what is not supplied in this mumbo-jumbo mess.
Drillbit Taylor certainly is not that bad but it definitely has it’s own problems, the most pressing of which being the question of whom the film has actually been made for – anyone? It’s too immature for adults and yet too grown up for the age group that would seem best suited (again about eleven). On a similar note it’s a film about a bunch of kids who hire a bodyguard due to the rather nasty attention they have been getting from the school bully and yet invites the audience to laugh at many of the tortures those kids are put through. Then by the end it does nothing more than firmly cement the notion that violence is bad unless it’s carried out by the right side. Conflicting, unfunny and slightly creepy stuff that is best avoided, or even better maybe, watched side by side with the likes of Mean Creek and Bully.
If you fancy a bit of horror this week then why not check out either All The Boys Love Mandy Lane or the Spanish hit The Orphanage (El Orfanato). In an earlier review (link) I described the latter as “an intelligent and unsettling movie, the kind of which European film makers have a real knack for but Hollywood just can’t seem to produce” but …Mandy Lane is almost a pleasing exception to that rule. It’s a curious throwback to the eighties slasher flick (minus the late nineties’ all knowing smuggery that we have become used to) that ,unlike all the sanitized remakes appearing recently, is actually an effective film. You could say it’s the harsh violence or the cruelty of the victims that makes it stand out but none of this would matter if it were not for director Jonathon Levine’s (currently the talk of town for The Wackness) decision to shoot the film like an art movie
about the beauty of youth or some such. If you’ll forgive the pun this is a cut above the rest.
This week’s unknown is Redacted. There’s been plenty of talk about Brian De Palma’s latest film and it’s been split down the middle in terms of positive and negative comment but it seems that no matter what side of the fence a critic comes down on I can’t help but get excited by an Iraq movie from the man who has given use decades of innovative and exciting movies – especially when even the bad ones are still worth watching.
To finish off I would like to make two statements – firstly, what with this being a film blog an’ all, the DVD Of The Week is a TV sitcom. Secondly, that sitcom The Office: An American Workplace – Season 3 is better than the BBC/Gervais behemoth that inspired it. Season 1 was an interesting adaptation considering the narrower limits of US network TV, in Season 2 it became it’s own animal (different but equal) and now it’s just plain better. The cast have really hit their stride, as have the writers and it’s just hilarious television.
If you haven’t yet seen it – do so.
If you still think Gervais & Co did it better – wake up.
