The Social Network

I think I enjoyed this film as much for the fact that I understood all of the tech speak as I did for the story. For instance the idea of hosting a race to gain root access to a UNIX server, and using it as a bench-mark in a job interview for a new programmer. Classic! Yet I also found I could so easily relate to Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) as the acerbic but highly motivated nerd.

Much of this lies in the fact that it’s not really about Facebook at all, but about the drama behind the venture – how the dynamics of friendship are fractured when big money enters the picture. The story hangs around the journey of Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg – who’s also astonishing/thrillingly dislikable by the way), a Harvard student who realizes his proto-Facebook ‘Facemash’, designed for students of his faculty, might also have appeal to the wider world.

Similarly, with Facebook founded as recently as 2004, the whole subject matter is still relatively juvenile, though the target audience will be far broader due to the widespread use of Facebook. And the underlying stories, the legal battles the changing dynamics of relationships and the change in the way business was conducted, lead to a tale much more dynamic than I had originally anticipated. But then that is where The Social Network’s charm springs from – taking what some might see as a dull subject and infusing it with heart.

This it does with superb performances highlighted in my mind by of one of my favourite actors in Justin Timberlake. For a singer who occasionally acts he shows a remarkable turn of style as the charming and unnervingly confident creator of Napster, Sean Parker. That said Sean Parker was actually only an early employee of Napster, but for the purposes of this film some artistic license can be granted.

And lastly there’s a script from Aaron Sorkin that’s very smart and well researched, and in dealing with the concerns of humans rather than computers, this story of betrayal, greed and moral conflict has themes that are timeless even if the subject matter isn’t.

Not only would I see this movie again, but I have bought the blu-ray for it. Definitely in my collection to be watched when the time is just right. And that might just be quite often – until the tech goes out of date, though I suspect that will be a number of years away yet.

 

Burlesque

Now this film was roundly panned by the critics as mindless and boring but I tend to disagree. I won’t argue that the storyline is really no different from a hundred other of this ilk, but there is something about it that somehow appeals. For this film is truly an escape from the daily grind of life and a feel-good story with zest.

Ali (Christina Aguilera) is a small-town girl with a big voice who escapes her small town and an uncertain future to follow her dreams to LA. After stumbling upon The Burlesque Lounge while looking for work, Ali lands a job as a cocktail waitress from Tess (Cher), the club’s proprietor and headliner. Burlesque’s outrageous costumes and bold choreography enrapture the young aspiring artist, who vows to perform there one day.

Soon enough, Ali builds a friendship with a featured dancer (Julianne Hough), finds an enemy in a troubled, jealous performer (Kristen Bell), and garners the affection of Jack (Cam Gigandet), a bartender and fellow musician. With the help of a sharp-witted stage manager (Stanley Tucci) and gender-bending host (Alan Cumming), Ali makes her way from the bar to the stage. Her spectacular voice restores The Burlesque Lounge to its former glory, though not before a charismatic entrepreneur (Eric Dane) arrives with an enticing proposal.

All it all it’s largely predictable and falls down in some of the areas the other films in this list excel – the script is pretty average, the sets are ok and some of the acting is downright weak. But there are some scenes in this film that are just pure showbiz. When the backing music fails and Christina has to sing for real, rather than just lip-synch the words…. Wow. You knew it was coming but her voice just fills the theatre. Britney eat your heart out! And it becomes one of those seminal moments in any musical based movie that you could just watch over and over. Just like Eminem rapping in 8-Mile. It’s the same feeling you get when they just get it bang on right. It was worth watching just for that moment. Priceless!

 

Black Swan

Now, in Black Swan, another Oscar contender director Darren Aronofsky explores the dark side of this morbid dedication to performance. This is a ballet melodrama in which it isn’t just the body that is threatened with
desctruction, but also the mind.

Natalie Portman plays the role of Nina, a New York ballerina who’s worked hard to be the best dancer in her company. She’s desperate to play the lead in a new version of Swan Lake, and has a good chance now that the troupe’s prima ballerina (Winona Ryder) has been forced into retirement. The company’s flamboyant artistic director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) believes Nina is perfect for the part of the virginal Swan Queen, who kills herself for love, but he doubts that she has the right stuff for the counter-part of her evil twin, the Black Swan.The latter needs more than mere discipline; it’s about spontaneous, sexual allure. Nina persuades him she has it in her, and the film is an account of how she tries to persuade herself.

Thomas is right though to have his doubts, as Nina is really still a child. Her home is a small apartment she shares with her mother (Barbara Hershey), a former ballerina who both smothers and scolds, biting back the bitterness she feels towards Nina after a less successful career of her own. Nina’s bedroom is filled with cuddly stuffed animals and not at all the domain of the fierce, sexual creature she has been asked to portray. It fairly screams repression, and just adds to her personal issues – secret bulimia, a pathological scratching, tortured bones and tendons. She tells herself this is what she really wants but somehow allows her world to collapse in on her as her mind falters.

I loved this film for the cinematography. The sets are lavish and lush and the acting quite superb. Natalie Portman has clearly seen this as a pivotal movie in her career and gone at it 100%. Ballerinas do have quite
extraordinary bodies, and she has presented to the world the archetypical form for this film. And that cannot be an easy feat. I found it thoroughly watchable.

A side note to this film is its appearance in an internet list that caught my attention, regarding movies never to go and see with your mother. I did mention this to my own mother and having seen the film can understand the reasoning for it. I can only imagine how heart wrenching it must be to watch a sweet young girl decline in the way Nina does in this film. Again it’s the realness of the performance and the not uncommon issues she is facing that might trouble some mothers as they relate it to their own daughter(s).

 

The King’s Speech

This film delivers great entertainment, not only in the portrayal of an actual event, but telling the tale of a commoner – and Aussie nevertheless – who manages to befriend the King. And while that may not seem quite so outlandish here in New Zealand, I can vouch for that fact that it would seem impossible in England. I lived there for a number of years and am well aware of the reverence and awe that the royal family are held in. I can see a number of people openly smirking at this idea.

And yet it is indeed a true tale. Many years put on hold at the request of the Queen Mother until her death, as it was her late husband at the centre of this tale. The king in question is George VI, formerly Albert, the Duke of York (Colin Firth), whom we first see about to address a crowd at Wembley in 1925. He looks more like a man about to step up to the gallows, for Albert is afflicted with a terrible stammer, and the large clunky microphone rearing in front of him will amplify his every tortured gulp and gasp. About him his courtiers look embarrassed, while his subjects look merely bewildered. That stammer might have become an historical footnote, but 11 years later his older brother David would, as Edward VIII, abdicate as king in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Requiring a voice to go with his unexpected accession to the throne, Albert tries various decidely odd remedies, including putting marbles in his mouth, but his tongue refuses to untangle.

Meanwhile, an Australian expat named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) is earning a living as a speech therapist in a grotty basement office on Harley Street, where one day a certain well-spoken lady arrives seeking a cure for her husband’s speech impediment. She would be Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) – the future Queen Mother – and her husband, dawdling in the shadows, none other than Albert. “What should I call you?” asks Logue. “Your Royal Highness,” he replies. Logue calls him “Bertie” instead, thus setting up a comedy of manners between a jolly Aussie commoner and his morose, exasperated monarch. Can this brash colonial enable the royal stiff to unbend? Logue may have no formal qualifications in his chosen profession, but he turns out to be rather good at it, coaxing from his fearful patient what may in time be the performance of his life.

I personally loved this movie, for a number of reasons. I felt it was supremely acted, and thus thoroughly deserving of its Oscar, but it also had a marvellous premise and a fantastic screenplay. I have a habit of preferring movies with typical action scenes and special effects, or something new like 3D. This film had none of that – just a great story told really well. Top entertainment.

 

Easy A

I just loved this movie for its sheer entertainment value. The storyline was suitably risqué, and the lead was played by the delightful Emma Stone. It is the pure unadulterated fun story of a clean cut high school girl who sees her life paralleling Hester Prynne’s in “The Scarlet Letter”, a book she is currently studying in school. Then
one small misunderstanding leads to her using the school “rumour mill” to her social and financial advantage.

The story is based around high school student Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone), who finds herself the victim of her school’s “rumour mill” when she lies to her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) about a weekend tryst with a fictional college freshman. Word quickly spreads of Olive’s promiscuity and, much to her surprise, she welcomes the attention. When she agrees to help out a bullied friend by pretending to sleep with him, her image rapidly degrades to a more lascivious state and her world begins to spin out of control. As she helps more and more of her classmates and her lies continue to escalate, Olive tries to find a way to save face before the  school’s religious fanatic Marianne (Amanda Bynes) gets her expelled and she loses a shot at gaining her own happiness.

Olive is well spoken and smart…  almost too smart to get herself into the situation she does. But she inevitably does get into it, and the fun of the movie is watching how deep she can go before she manages to find her way
out. There are a number of sub-plots involving relationships between other students and teachers, but for me this was all about one girl snubbing her nose at the established way of doing things and making it look ever so cool. I feel it’s an old school classic to rival Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

There is a great supporting cast also, led in my view by the quite wacky parents played by Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci. I particularly liked the touches they brought to the film with their new-age parents approach. They just seemed to round off a slightly off-beat story that I personally thoroughly enjoyed and will definately watch again.

 

Introduction

Through no fault of my own, I seem to have seen an inordinately large number of films over the past 12 months, and enjoyed some markedly more than others. Some movies I have seen because they were recommended (The Kids are Alright), some due to their Oscar contention (The King’s Speech, Black Swan), some because I just loved the trailer and the premise (Easy A) and one because of the recommendation of a film reviewer (Blue
Valentine).

And I have found something that I always knew. Films are totally subjective – you either like them or you don’t, whether they have great or appalling reviews. And that is why Blue Valentine does not get a review here. Not because it is a bad film – it is not – but it concisely and unashamedly makes us watch a relationship in slow decline as it falls apart. And that to me is not really entertainment. By definition of course it is, but it’s not
something I really choose to watch. Or rather it’s not something I would choose to watch again.

And that is what this blog is all about. All of the movies I review here I would see again. In fact I may have already. And the reason for that is all of these movies entertain and enthral. They provide that escapism that I am always looking for in a film. They are quite simply a stonking good watch.

And while it is true that a few of those on this blog are either Oscar winners or nominees, it is also true that I saw a number of other films equally nominated that I did not feel warranted being on this list. All of these films are here because they delivered and I am happy to recommend them.

And while I am aware that most of these are no longer available on general release at the cinema, which merely means that they will soon be out on DVD or Blu-ray. Put them at the top of your viewing list and you will not be
disappointed.