Movie reviews!!!
Bruno
Bruno, Larry Charles and Sasha Baron Cohen's follow up to Borat, is a film with many issues. Should these issues matter when the end product is hilarious? Well, kind of.
Yes, the film is very funny. Cohen's Bruno is a gay, Austrian fashion-obsessed TV host who heads to America after being shamed at a Milan catwalk event. His reasons for going to the US are to discover fame, which is where the first of the film's big two themes comes into play. The obsession with celebrity, and people's desire to be celebrities (or for their children to be), are mocked without mercy. There is also a brief trip to the middle east: Bruno decides he will achieve fame by solving Palestine/Israeli crisis. The second target arrives when Bruno heads to middle America: homophobia. Here, Bruno meets army cadets,a macho karate instructor, small-minded hunters and preachers who "cure" homosexuality. Cohen makes it his mission allow these people to tie there own nooses by playing to their worst, cliche-ridden fears.
It doesn't sound hilarious, but if you know Cohen, you'd be aware it often it is. The laughs come from Cohen's outrageous caricature as well as his victim's often unbelievable reactions, such as stage parents agreeing to let dangerous things happen to their babies for a photo shoot, or the gay converter's blank response to being told he has "amazing blowjob lips". It's also often shocking and upsetting; the audience reaction in the final wrestling match is downright scary. And while the majority of the real people embarrassed and vilified in the film do deserve it, you can't help but think perhaps a few aren't reacting to Bruno's sexuality, rather the cameras filming him and making it clear to them they are being pranked. This is a minor quibble; a bigger issue is the constant question of who is in on the joke. What is on screen tends to be funny either way, but thinking about what's real and what isn't takes you out of the movie.
It's very funny, and worth seeing, even if it is too similar to Borat, following to the letter the exact same plot arc, to the extent that Bruno is even left by his assistant character halfway through the film, to be reunited for the climax. And with the reliance on shock humour, it is difficult to imagine it being as good on any subsequent viewings. It's a good enough film, but just the once.
7/10
I'm quite weirded out by some reactions to the film. People have been disgusted by it. I understand that it's not to all tastes. I wouldn't send my mother out to see it. But people who have bought their tickets... did they not know? Did they not see the rating, or any of the endless publicity before the film's release? It's hard to imagine they didn't know what they were getting into. Were they expecting a Merchant Ivory production?
One woman at the end of my screening said to her friend "That was so shit it was funny!" She had been laughing all the way through, but it seems that she thought that the film wasn't in on the joke of itself, as if Bruno was a serious character and the audience was enjoying it the same was as a Uwe Boll film.
People are strange.
Drag Me to Hell
After Spider-man 3, Sam Raimi could have tackled another big-budget film, or a smaller, more restrained effort akin to his work before that trilogy such as The Gift or A Simple Plan. Instead, he traveled back even further into his past to bring Drag Me to Hell, a callback to his glorious Evil Dead days, hinted at by the surgery scene in Spider-man 2. While it copped a PG-13 rating - the same as the Spider-man trilogy - it's almost as much fun as his early work: over-the-top, violent, gross, and ruthless. In other words, it's great.
Alison Lohman plays Christine Brown, a former country girl now angling for a promotion at the bank where she works, while dating a well-bred college professor, Clay Dalton (Justin Long) whose parents disapprove of her. In an effort to seem tougher for her boss (David Paymer), Christine refuses a mortgage extension to an old gypsy woman, Mrs Ganesh (Lorna Raver). Ganesh promptly attacks Christine in her car, gums her chin (!) and curses her to three days of torment before being taken to hell, for eternity.
There's not a lot below the surface of this film. There's no subtext; it's not a metaphor for anything. The plot is just an excuse for a series of horror sequences which tend to be frightening, stomach-churning and hilarious in equal measure. Lohman does fine work treading the admittedly predictable path from meek to badass, while showing a gift for comedy: see her reaction to the question "you mean you have a cat... right?" Lorna Raver is hysterical as Mrs Ganesh, and Dileep Rao is amusing as the psychic Rham Jas who tries his best to help Christine.
There's a lot less blood, and stop-motion has been replaced by CG, but the spirit of the Evil Dead series has returned to Raimi, and it's something to celebrate.
9/10
Then yesterday I watched Evil Dead 2 again. It's still amazing. Now I just need to get my a sexy, feature-packed import of Army of Darkness.
Finally, I highly recommend reading the source novel A Simple Plan. The movie is very good, but the book is amazing, and has ten times the tension.
Bruno, Larry Charles and Sasha Baron Cohen's follow up to Borat, is a film with many issues. Should these issues matter when the end product is hilarious? Well, kind of.
Yes, the film is very funny. Cohen's Bruno is a gay, Austrian fashion-obsessed TV host who heads to America after being shamed at a Milan catwalk event. His reasons for going to the US are to discover fame, which is where the first of the film's big two themes comes into play. The obsession with celebrity, and people's desire to be celebrities (or for their children to be), are mocked without mercy. There is also a brief trip to the middle east: Bruno decides he will achieve fame by solving Palestine/Israeli crisis. The second target arrives when Bruno heads to middle America: homophobia. Here, Bruno meets army cadets,a macho karate instructor, small-minded hunters and preachers who "cure" homosexuality. Cohen makes it his mission allow these people to tie there own nooses by playing to their worst, cliche-ridden fears.
It doesn't sound hilarious, but if you know Cohen, you'd be aware it often it is. The laughs come from Cohen's outrageous caricature as well as his victim's often unbelievable reactions, such as stage parents agreeing to let dangerous things happen to their babies for a photo shoot, or the gay converter's blank response to being told he has "amazing blowjob lips". It's also often shocking and upsetting; the audience reaction in the final wrestling match is downright scary. And while the majority of the real people embarrassed and vilified in the film do deserve it, you can't help but think perhaps a few aren't reacting to Bruno's sexuality, rather the cameras filming him and making it clear to them they are being pranked. This is a minor quibble; a bigger issue is the constant question of who is in on the joke. What is on screen tends to be funny either way, but thinking about what's real and what isn't takes you out of the movie.
It's very funny, and worth seeing, even if it is too similar to Borat, following to the letter the exact same plot arc, to the extent that Bruno is even left by his assistant character halfway through the film, to be reunited for the climax. And with the reliance on shock humour, it is difficult to imagine it being as good on any subsequent viewings. It's a good enough film, but just the once.
7/10
I'm quite weirded out by some reactions to the film. People have been disgusted by it. I understand that it's not to all tastes. I wouldn't send my mother out to see it. But people who have bought their tickets... did they not know? Did they not see the rating, or any of the endless publicity before the film's release? It's hard to imagine they didn't know what they were getting into. Were they expecting a Merchant Ivory production?
One woman at the end of my screening said to her friend "That was so shit it was funny!" She had been laughing all the way through, but it seems that she thought that the film wasn't in on the joke of itself, as if Bruno was a serious character and the audience was enjoying it the same was as a Uwe Boll film.
People are strange.
Drag Me to Hell
After Spider-man 3, Sam Raimi could have tackled another big-budget film, or a smaller, more restrained effort akin to his work before that trilogy such as The Gift or A Simple Plan. Instead, he traveled back even further into his past to bring Drag Me to Hell, a callback to his glorious Evil Dead days, hinted at by the surgery scene in Spider-man 2. While it copped a PG-13 rating - the same as the Spider-man trilogy - it's almost as much fun as his early work: over-the-top, violent, gross, and ruthless. In other words, it's great.
Alison Lohman plays Christine Brown, a former country girl now angling for a promotion at the bank where she works, while dating a well-bred college professor, Clay Dalton (Justin Long) whose parents disapprove of her. In an effort to seem tougher for her boss (David Paymer), Christine refuses a mortgage extension to an old gypsy woman, Mrs Ganesh (Lorna Raver). Ganesh promptly attacks Christine in her car, gums her chin (!) and curses her to three days of torment before being taken to hell, for eternity.
There's not a lot below the surface of this film. There's no subtext; it's not a metaphor for anything. The plot is just an excuse for a series of horror sequences which tend to be frightening, stomach-churning and hilarious in equal measure. Lohman does fine work treading the admittedly predictable path from meek to badass, while showing a gift for comedy: see her reaction to the question "you mean you have a cat... right?" Lorna Raver is hysterical as Mrs Ganesh, and Dileep Rao is amusing as the psychic Rham Jas who tries his best to help Christine.
There's a lot less blood, and stop-motion has been replaced by CG, but the spirit of the Evil Dead series has returned to Raimi, and it's something to celebrate.
9/10
Then yesterday I watched Evil Dead 2 again. It's still amazing. Now I just need to get my a sexy, feature-packed import of Army of Darkness.
Finally, I highly recommend reading the source novel A Simple Plan. The movie is very good, but the book is amazing, and has ten times the tension.
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