Runner Runner Review - OR - Fappy Nappy

Plot

Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake) is a broke college student with a penchant for gambling and mathematical genius. However, when he discovers that he’s been duped out of his life savings on an online poker site, Furst throws caution to the wind and jets off to Costa Rica to confront billionaire gambling magnate Ivan Block (Ben Affleck). After being offered a job and drawn into Block’s extravagant world, it isn’t long before things start turning dark and Furst is forced into fighting for his life.

They couldn't believe it, right there...Cthulu.

Review

On the face of things, Runner Runner has everything going for it: a popular, bankable cast (who just happen to be a big bunch of lookers to boot), an intensely in vogue premise with its finger pressed firmly to the heartbeat of modernity, a hip young director on the cusp of the big time and that addictive sense of utopian falsitiude; nothing good EVER happens in Costa Rice, though it does look damn pretty.

If there’s one word that best summarises Runner Runner it’s ‘unremarkable.’ It’s utterly and completely ordinary. And there’s no justification for it. It has a perfect set-up – gambling, internet heists, contemporary crime, exotic locations, beautiful people: its the ultimate concoction of modernity, an ostensible homerun. Not on quite on blockbuster level naturally, but in its own league of small-time hits.

Shiny, perfect, gorgeous...all empty space within.

However, with an overwhelming sense of superficiality supported by the limp and lifeless arms of the narrative, Runner Runner finds itself slumped in the gutter. Possibly with a bleach blonde whore in one hand and a wedge of sexy sexy money in the other.

Cast wise is where the film is at once at its strongest and at its most disappointing. Ben Affleck is a decent watch as the dark and malevolent Block even if his bad Bond villain routine remains a perplexing turn for the Oscar winner, and Timberlake plays his cooler-than-cool, better-man shtick with well-practiced aplomb, though the act does start to feel tired before the final credits role. Elsewhere however, Gemma Arterton (the only female role) is exclusively a clothes rack, pouting about the place in a conveyor belt of increasingly revealing party gowns while the film’s bucket full of small-time, supporting roles are largely indistinguishable in their aggressive beardyness. _______ CIA agent is particularly painful; his dialogue screams of half-arsed comic relief, while the real comedy comes from his schizophrenic role in the film itself.

She had no idea her leg was on fire.

Runner Runner wants to be intelligent, tries so hard to be taken seriously in a ‘holier-than-though try and keep up sort of way’ (which Oceans 11 perfected) – like that one annoying kid in class with their arm attacking the air like a fleshy spear each time the unwitting teacher asks a question – but it’s hopeless. For all of the gambling jargon it throws at the audience with a wink and a nudge, it moronically nails some poor stereotype or crippling metaphor to the wall.

Every Costa Rican is crime-lord murderer, didn’t you know? And there are identikit bikini-clad hookers everywhere. Costa Rica is obviously some sort of personification of Sin, though here it’s less ‘apocalyptic binary power to the grace of God himself’ and more ‘snorty-snorty angry Hispanics in a pool party.’

Runner Runner is undoubtedly a cool production, it has the sort of swagger and style reminiscent of the suavetastic Oceans 11, even if it doesn’t come remotely close to hitting such heights. It’s got some decent action beats – crocodiles are always cool, like impy dinosaurs – and can get a good pace going whenever it feels like and stops pretending to be smart. But there just isn’t enough.  It’s the sort of film that makes for a cracking poster (it's even got that totally cool 'words over the top' thing going on which didn't become tired two years ago)…and little else.

Ben Affleck's chin...what's going on there?

Verdict

A sad state of affairs. It was never going to be brilliant but…Overwhelmingly superficial and totally weightless: a resolute declaration of ‘meh.’

2/5

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Diana Review - OR - Flaccid Cash Attack

Plot

In the wake of her split from Prince Charles, Diana’s (Naomi Watts) life is threatening to spiral out of control. However, after a chance meeting in a hospital, romance blossoms between herself and heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). As her public life and presence explode into superstardom and her private life is wrenched into the public eye, Diana is faced with her toughest challenge yet: juggling her humanitarian dreams with her burgeoning love.

What are they both looking at? It's probably still more interesting than Diana.

Review

They may not be financially lucrative, normally anyway, but biopics are the omnipresent champions of the awards' seasons, regularly cleaning out the Oscars and their lesser siblings year in year out. It’s understandable. Biopics often focus on intensely dramatic characters, who live and die tragic lives and there’s nothing that Academy voters love more than balls-to-the-wall, tear-your-eyes-out melodrama.

Diana should at least, if there’s any justice in the world, pick up a Razzie or two. Or seven.

Naomi Watts’ involvement in this debacle is nothing short of baffling. She was obviously hoping that some of The Iron Lady’s magic – which worked so well for Meryl Streep – would rub off on her. It really couldn’t have gone more wrong.

Diana makes it’s protagonist seem like the least likeable person in the world, never mind the People’s Princess. Twee, plain irritating and rampantly stupid, she’s utterly devoid of substance. A childish little girl absent of sense flapping on about love with all the nuance and intelligence of McFarty the Drunken Clown. It’s painful. Stropping in the park, stalking a bloke, angrily playing the piano (because that’s a thing you do when you live in Cloud Cuckooland) all of these highlights and more await you with a purchase to your local Diana screening. Perhaps most egregiously, after bickering with her douchey boyfriend she visits his apartment. Upon finding it on the dirty side of your standard sewer, what does she do: sort out her relationship? Shout at him for being a pig? Leave and return to her palace? No, she cleans it all!...What?? What is this film!?

Her apotheosis in the eyes of the film as well as it’s mindless inhabitants is as bemusing as it monstrously irritating; the nurse’s gurn of moronic adulation is particularly vomit inducing. Yes, Diana was beloved by many, it’s well known…so there’s no need for minute-by-minute reminders. Dianaseems to believe that 90s Britain was populated exclusively by idiot man-babies who can’t help but stop to gurgle and poke at the pretty thing that passes by. It’s cinematic suicide.

Sayid escaped from the island, moved to London and because a professional knob.

Diana manages to be both repugnantly pretentious and overwhelmingly vapid at the same time. The film sports endless miniscule half-scenes, lasting 10 seconds maximum, all of which serve zero purpose but to pad out a woefully conspired narrative and, apparently, capitulate the sense of wearying, comically misplaced, elitism. Diegetically, technically, narratively, thematically: there’s no element of the production that isn’t smothered in viscous repellence. Why a lingering shot of Steiff teddy bears sat on a chair? Well, why not? She’s super rich and loved by everyone, aren’t you jealous of her?

The screenplay, well …In an amateurish film, where everything is designed to make its audience battle each other for freedom through the fire-exit, the screenplay still manages to stink like a fresh steamy turd courtesy of that puppy you thought was a good idea in a kitchen full of rotting vegetables. Every line is so laden with lofty proclamation you can almost see the pain in the actors’ faces as they deliver the latest flagellated turkey. Nothing feels real; everything is a catchphrase in the vein of the very worst pubescent poetry. It’s all uncomfortably artificial, controlled to the point of living death, utterly excruciating and ‘wish for spontaneous-combustion’ cringeworthy. Diana’s interpretation of love is a total thematic clusterfuck. And is, hilariously, almost a swearword: it’s used everywhere, meaning everything. For a fun game, watch Diana and mentally replace every instance of ‘love’ with ‘f**k.’

It wants to be some epic romance a la Romeo & Juliet but ends up farcical in its failure, painful with its ham-fisted idea of what love is, as if so long as they say it often enough everything will be fine.

Action packed materialism! It's all kicking off.

There are no greener pastures on the technical side of things either. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s (for shame!) use of the camera is like the worst kind of snooty student film with the exception of the opening tracking shot. Though it’s refusal to show Diana’s face quickly grates and sets the obnoxious tone for things to come.

Diana’s globetrotting is at least mildly entertaining with its aesthetic and sensual differences. That isn’t to say these sequences are particularly well done – they aren’t, they're actually probably a little bit racist – just better than the rest of the mushy drivel on offer.

Ultimately, Diana is insulting to the memory of the woman it tries so poorly to praise. Not because the film is narratively offensive (though it may very well be for those better versed, and more closely involved, with the story) but because it’s so ball-breakingly bad.

Here’s a pitch for a sequel that would be more honourable to Diana’s memory: Diana never died. She survived the crash and secretly migrated to Russia where she trained as an assassin in the Ural mountains under the Guidance of Master Dickbrush (played by Gary Busey). The film follows her systematic murdering of the Western leaders that tried to kill her off. The final fight will be against Mecha-Queen. We’ll call it…Diana 2: Dawn of Death, Slogan: God Save the Queen…She’s Gonna Need it.

Note: not a horror film. Apparently.

Verdict

It lacks the bravery, skill or belief to validate its own existence. Like a gilded mirror it can be beautiful to look at, shiny and inviting, but look closer and the grainy paint-job starts to show through, then the cracks in the frame and then you stand back and realise the mirror isn’t a mirror at all, but a pile of rancid shit.

1/5

The trailer, if you've got two minutes to waste:

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Rush Review - OR - Sexy Burny Parties

Plot

In the middle of the swinging 70s, with Formula 1 on the cusp of becoming an advertiser’s favourite plaything, two longtime adversaries are squaring off. After blooding each other in Formula 3, hedonist British playboy James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and calculating, reserved Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) are at the top of their game and the apex of their venomous rivalry, competing tooth and nail for the 1976 Formula 1 World Championship with potentially ruinous consequences.

A secret love story.

Review 

Formula 1 has had a bit of a torrid time at the cinema; it isn’t a sport that naturally translates to the big screen in any obvious way. It drowns under technical jargon, is intrinsically off-putting to the uninitiated and somehow manages to be both very repetitive and brainmeltingly eclectic at the same time. In short: a filmmaker’s nightmare.

Not for steady-hand Ron Howard however. Any man who knows his way around a spaceship, as he demonstrated with Apollo 13, is apparently a dab hand with racing cars too. Though the racing sections are truly less than half of Rush – and suffer a tad from genre staples; everybody loves a montage – Howard has left no stone unturned in his quest to deliver an impassioned and respectable account of the ups, downs and boundless energy of the sport. If there’s anywhere else where that man could have stuck a camera, it’ll take a very brave person to find it. It’s fantastic, varied and masterful filmmaking, thrilling for fans and non-fans of the sport alike.

This isn't from the film, this is just what happens when Chris Hemsworth walks around.

It’s been a heavy duty summer for balls-to-the-wall action and CGI orgy apocalypses and yet, in terms of stripped back simplistic drama and pure cinematic excitement, Rush threatens to out-do them all. The 70s were just that kind of era I guess. With a rarely seen technical proficiency and top-drawer editing (which should find itself challenging for the big bucks come the end of the year if there’s any justice in the world), Rush’s racing sequences are breathless, manic, frightening and purely exhilarating in equal measure. It’s about as close as one could get to feeling like they’re a part of the race without strapping into a vehicular coffin themselves and in that sense Howard has more than delivered. Good thing really, it does all seem a tad unsafe and burny.

Rush is a technical home run, the cinematography, clothing, attitude and hell, even the colours, coalesce into something far more than an image on screen; they become a window through time. Yes, with enough money and time anybody could recreate a period, but what Rushdoes differently is absolutely love every bloody minute of it. It’s undeniable in its attractiveness – as indeed the film tongue-in-cheek points out; no sooner has Hunt been in a crash than he’s shagging Natalie Dormer’s Nurse Gemma nine ways to Sunday – and utterly addictive.

The gung-ho, machismo racing is only the lesser part of Rush however. This is a biopic after all and a biopic it certainly is, following the tried and tested formula of tracking its protagonists’ interrelated lives up to their climactic collision. For every which way Hemsworth’s Hunt is a smooth posho with too much time, money and charm to know what to do with, Brühl’s Lauda is unsocial, calculating and driven (snrk). They’re the veritable two-sides-of-the-same-coin, and while your alliance may seem obvious at first, the characters are written and performed in such an infectious way that ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ do not come so easily. What does come easily however is pure enjoyment at a film crafted by one of the industry’s finest craftsmen and delivered by two actors at the very top of their game.

Again, not the film. Just an average Tuesday for Hemsworth.

Rush doesn’t get everything right. The scene with Hunt and his little punchy-punchy with the reporter is bizarrely mismanaged and the Despairing Wives Club are more than a little underdeveloped, barely getting a look-in from behind whatever screen happens to be nearest. But, truthfully, it hardly seems to matter. This is Hemsworth and Brühl’s film and they own it from start to finish, overcoming clunky voiceovers to deliver deliciously detailed characters who actually change and evolve in ways that are both poignant and believable. A tragic rarity.

While it may seem an ostensibly by-the-books biopic by way of a sports movie, it goes far deeper than that and, though trying not to put too much of a vague and irritating philosophical edge on things, Rush addresses the ‘human condition’ with far more skill than more overtly thinky and self-congratulating films out there. What revs off as a film about two men dealing with a whirlwind rivalry transforms, by the time the final credits role, into something far more affecting: people dealing not with each other, but with themselves, their own essence of life. The dramatic beats may not be exactly subtle, instead dealt with broad strokes and sometimes needlessly expositional dialogue, but it's testament to the ability of Hemsworth and Brühl that it works.

Meanwhile, Brühl has liver and onions for diner again.

Verdict

As sleek as the vehicles it fawns over, Rush is a pristinely crafted film that does all it sets out to do and more. Equal parts bombastic, funny and dramatic, it’s technical brilliance is matched only by the remarkable turns of Messrs.’ Hemsworth and Brühl.

5/5

Feel...the speed!

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About Time Review - OR - The Doctor's Eternal Torment

Plot

Tim (Domhall Gleeson) is a 21-year-old wallflower, living in amiable safety with his eccentric family in the grassy heights of Cornwall, including his Dad (Bill Nighy), Mum (Linday Duncan) and hippy sister Kitkat (Lydia Wilson). Yearning for love, his father tells the unwitting Tim that he can, in fact, travel in time and so, with hope in his heart, the young pretender takes off for London. There he meets American publisher Mary (Rachel McAdams) and sets out to win her heart and the perfect family life with nothing but his wits, charm…and that time travel trick.

SMILING? In the RAIN? It must be love!

Review

Richard Curtis, on top of being one of Britain’s most successful and prolific comedy writers, is widely thought of as the resident Mr. Rom-com. Despite, y’know, having made a grand total of 3 rom-com movies (as well as writing a few others), including his most recent About Time. It’s testament to his ability for saccharine romance and the fantastically foppish that his few contributions to the engorged genre of soppy pop – including Notting Hill and Love Actually – not only contribute to it, but veritably typify it.

About Time is a no holds barred, straight-faced, follow-up to the tradition that Curtis has made, cultivated and mastered.

The anual 'father-son-hold-your-breath-in-the-fart-cupboard' competition was well underway.

About Time does little differently and instead focuses on doing what it does very very well. All of the rom-com conventions you love to hate are present and accounted for: kooky family, grouchy grandparents, wacky weddings, musical cues and enough plucky montages to serenade you jovially off to the end of time itself. And while such an adherence to the rules is sugary suicide for the average hot pink, happy-go-lucky, dowdy-girl-meets-mysterious-boy-in-a-place production, About Time approaches the fawning beast with the confidence, skill and heart to get away with it.

What it does do differently however, very differently indeed, is throw in its sci-fi garnish: time travel.

Though About Time sometimes seems to forget that it is, in fact, about time (travel), its creative flair with its central gimmick is certainly commendable, utilised for frequent laughs and several emotionally charged jabs. Orchestrating the perfect first night and proposal and best-man speech; setting up clandestine meetings with his father; fixing a housemate’s nightmarish play performance: Tim is nothing if not charmingly self-serving with his majestically unexplained superpower. Rom-coms are frequent targets for criticism on the basis that everything is a tad too much ‘happily-ever-after’ but with its time-travel ace up its sleeve, About Time offers a weirdly amusing ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at just how everything may line up so perfectly.

Pictured: All of the Britain, pale men failing at sport.

Casting wise, About Time largely knocks it out of the park, to use a totally unrelated metaphor. Bill Nighy plays a fantastic Bill Nighy, all shambling charm and muted scholarly academia, while Duncan and Wilson abide professionally to their respective familial conventions as the mother and sister. Though initially a bit wooden and every inch the lesser Hugh Grant to begin with, Domhall Gleeson eventually makes it work, growing into the central role like some bumbling everyman by way of Dr. Who rejects.

In a somewhat ironic twist, the weakest string to About Time’s cupid’s bow is its central love-story. McAdams is appropriately adorable as the loser-type Mary (though she’s surely played this exact same character enough times by now! Maybe she’ll get to time-travel next time) but her presence is weirdly weightless. So far as the plot goes, she has as much agency as the chair you’re sat on (an awkward side-effect where time-travel can explain and control pretty much everything) and her and Tim’s relationship goes remarkably smoothly. Whereas with most films where time-travel is its guiding force something enormous and world destroying invariably goes wrong, here it’s a pleasantly smooth ride, with only one hiccup far too easily swept away. Every time the film threatens to ratchet up the emotional stakes…it almost cowardly takes a step back.

But maybe that’s the point. The key relationship here is between Tim and his father rather than Tim and Mary and while that may seem ostensibly peculiar come actively idiotic…it actually works perfectly. About Time works because it marries straight-laced convention with something just a little bit different and seeing Tim and Mary’s relationship blossom through the perspective of father and son time-traveling team just, for whatever reason, works.

Well that fringe is certainly About Time. About time it was cut! Can I get a 'hell yeah'?

Verdict

Perfect for starry-eyed schmoozers and the average cinemagoer alike, About Timeis chock full of fabulously entertaining characters (Bill Nighy, ye be a god) and romantic beats. A perfectly pitched summer rom-com with enough of a difference to avoid the gloopy pitfalls of stereotype.

4/5

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