Very quick 2008 reviews

Married Life

Well cast, well acted drama about (un)happily married life in 40s suburbia. The Ira Sachs penned adaptation of the John Bingham novel is a nicely paced, convincingly plotted yarn that allows the cast (Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan in particular) to shine. Lacking that special something to elevate it to greatness, this is nevertheless worth your time.

B

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (3D)

Whilst Beowulf gave us an exciting glimpse of a 3D future, 'Journey' simply shows us how irritating it can be when a director tries to hard to make the audience go "wow - it's 3D". Fraser, who's great in the right role, looks too much like a second string all-American quarterback who's been hitting the cheeseburgers, yet is still the least annoying screen presence in a bumbling triumverate who go looking for the mythical Jules Verne location. The whole thing is tedious and I bailed as soon as they hit the centre of the earth and I realised things were not going to be any more exciting there than they were on the particularly unexciting surface.

F

Death Race

Absurd, ludicrous - at times completely non-sensical - yet somehow a bit of a guilty pleasure, although not really since it is never quite good enough for that. I did like the cinematography and set design however, and Ian McShane is always good value these days. God only knows what Joan Allen saw in the script though - maybe her copy was written on 100 dollar bills? Statham is what he is and the plot has more holes in it that a hula hoop factory, but it actually speeds by at a fairly decent pace and is always reasonably watchable. It is directed by Paul Anderson - no not the good one - the other one. The good one is Paul Thomas Anderson. This one is Paul WS Anderson. The helpful middle name/initials is how you tell which one directed which film. That and the fact that one directs stuff like Magnolia and There Will Be Blood, and the other does stuff like Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil. Would be a bit surprising if WS's resume read Mortal Kombat 2, Soldier, Alien vs Predator, Punch Drunk Love. Maybe the WS stands for What a load of Shit? Bit unfair really though cause I *almost* enjoyed this.

D+

The Bank Job

Can you tell the quality of a movie from the trailers that play before it? Generally I can't stand watching trailers and aim to turn up to a film about a minute or two before the opening credits role. However you can't always time it right and I sometimes get there too early and have to sit through previews of films I either don't want spoiled in any way, or films that I have zero interest in seeing.

Before Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job we had trailers for:

The Eye - an unconvincing blind Jessica Alba undergoes an eye transplant and starts seeing things. The trailer asks us if we can believe our own eyes if they are not our own. I think the answer is yes, unless your trapped inside a stupid horror film.

21 - the film about the MIT students who took on Vegas at Blackjack. Good story, lousy looking film.

Never Back Down - whose title I think says it all.

Street Kings - Keanu Reeves plays a cop struggling to overcome a plot that looks like the sort of thing we've seen done before. Many times.

It seemed the sort of crowd that the distributors were expecting was easily pleased and not particularly discerning, so when the main attraction started I wasn't exactly hopeful. However this adaptation of a true story is actually pretty entertaining.

Jason Statham is not someone whose films I look out for but he's not someone I'd refuse to watch either. He's effective enough in this as the car dealer who is approached, indirectly, by MI5 to rob a bank in order to recover some sensitive photographs of a member of the royal family. The twist being that he doesn't realise that's what he's organising - he thinks it's a straight-forward bank robbery. Statham assembles a motley crew of slightly irritating East End wannabe gangsters and gets to work on digging a tunnel through to the floor of the vault.

Donaldson is an effective director and London is presented fairly nicely in retro-fashion, which adds a little bit of interest. The are problems. The robbery is not particularly gripping or ingenious, like it was for example in Rififi. There aren't any characters that keep you glued to the screen, like there were for example in Sexy Beast. It's simply a decently put together film, decently acted with a decent script but little that stands out as excellent. Perhaps the only stand out in fact is David Suchet as a sleazy, evil porn baron. It's the one noteworthy performance in the movie.

The Bank Job is not something you should try and see on the big screen. It'll work perfectly well on your TV, but is is certainly an above average piece of work that'll hold your interest throughout. C+