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I couldn't get to the cinema quickly enough. Going by my Facebook news feed and celebrity tweets, I knew that The Hangover was bound to be a riot - everyone thought so! And they weren't wrong. This excellent movie, with its plot and structure somewhere halfway between Dude, Where's My Car? and Very Bad Things, has an adult Superbad-esque cast. At first the dynamics don't seem quite right, but soon enough viewers will realise they are the fortunate witnesses to a refreshingly new take on the whole Las Vegas partying-gone-wrong-comedy genre. The unforgettable Zach Galifianakis plays Alan, who we soon come to love as the endearing nitwit in the group. Bradley Cooper plays Phil, a married school teacher hungry for some high jinks. Ed Helms is Stu, a stiff dentist whose live-in girlfriend runs a pretty tight ship. Justin Bartha (Doug) completes the foursome, playing the groom whose bachelor party gets these friends into a boatload of trouble in the first place. Starting from the moment they find Doug missing, his groomsmen retrace their drunken steps from the previous night, and chance upon some unusual characters and information on the way. Will they be able to find Doug in time for his wedding? Either way, everyone is in for one heck of a crazy adventure.
This story, originally a fantasy/horror novella by the brilliant Neil Gaiman (Stardust), is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Coraline, however, is a darker, creepier and much more unsettling animated stop-motion film. The title character is a little girl whose career-driven writer/editor parents have recently up and moved the family to a forsaken little town, moving into one of several apartments in a big old mansion. While exploring her new surroundings Coraline meets a few of her eccentric neighbours which include Miss Forcible and Miss Spink, two retired stage actresses, and the athletic Mr B., who trains mice to play music. Coraline goes on to find a small door in the living room of her own apartment, but she is not prepared for what lays behind it – a tunnel which leads her into a parallel, yet not-quite-right, world where her Other Parents live. The Other Parents, unlike her old ones, are very attentive towards Coraline and she soon feels right at home. With buttons for eyes, the Other Mother and Other Father make her a deal to stay with them forever, but is Coraline really prepared to give up some of the things she’s always taken for granted? The tale of this clever little girl (who laments constantly being called Caroline by new acquaintances) is truly enchanting as she uncovers the spooky, mysterious world behind the little door, ultimately leading to her making decisions which could forever affect everyone's lives.
You could be forgiven for expecting Special to be another cop movie - which would be a reasonable thing to think after learning that Michael Rapaport plays the lead. After all, we usually see him as a man in blue, an officer of the law - not in Special, though. Here, Rapaport plays an otherwise unremarkable, comic book-reading meter maid named Les who agrees to trial an experimental new anti-depressant. Soon enough, Les starts experiencing some odd new changes in his body. Changes that might be likened to a superhero’s abilities. Problem is, nor his friends nor doctor see what Les is seeing. Becoming increasingly disconnected from reality, Les is so enthralled by his new-found powers that he decides to quit his day job in order to fight crime. The story follows Les as he further and further falls victim to the undesired side effects of the drug. The lines between reality and imagination are blurred and characters and viewers alike descend into a murky pit of confusion. What starts out as a slow movie ends up becoming oddly compelling, at times even gripping. Not a strict comedy, as I had expected to see, but rather a drama with a bit of laughter and sadness thrown in: we laugh with Les, we sympathise with him. But in the end, it is up to him, rather than us, to make sense of the true extent of his special situation.
Only the cleverest and most visionary of directors could adapt a Twilight book into a motion picture. Catherine Hardwicke, Twilight’s director, is not one of those people. The novel itself, the first in the four-book Twilight vampire romance saga, is long and slow-paced. It’s not until shortly before the end of the book that its speed picks up and we are bombarded with all the excitement at once. However, in its movie adaptation, Hardwicke has not even managed to pull off an exciting ending – in fact, the movie starts out as slowly as it ends, with plenty of painful awkwardness in between. No wonder Kristen Stewart's (Bella) father has been quoted as saying that both he and his daughter didn't think of Twilight as a great movie. More so, it feels like an amateurish attempt at blockbuster movie-making. While Stewart, Robert Pattinson (Edward) and Taylor Lautner (Jacob) have been excellently cast, the film obviously lacked a director with direction. What could have been made into a decent movie is instead a clumsy, try-hard and all-too-literal adaptation of a good story in a badly-written book. The film did not fail for lack of budget, imagination or hype, but it failed because it is no better than if Bella – a 17-year-old high schooler - had written and directed the movie herself. Let’s hope that Chris Weitz does a better job as director of the next instalment.
Hello there, fellow movie-goers! This is Flick Chick, a.k.a. Nicola, and I will be bringing you all sorts of movie reviews! Now some of you might think, who cares? But the thing is, I will be reviewing films regardless of genre, budget, era - just think of me as an all-around movie buff who uses a bit of wit and targeted references to bring you concise, fun and worthwhile reviews.
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