Film Review: Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd

(Jonny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Alan Rickman, Sascha Baron Cohen)

It's fairly rare to see a musical film nowadays. The last one I can think of is probably Chicago, and that was a few years ago. Still, it's nice to see something a it different, and this was certainly different, in many ways.

The main way is that it was a Tim Burton film that I actually enjoyed, which is a very rare occurance. The production had a very similar colour scheme, if not actual style to Sin City. Everything very dark, accentuated to close to black and white, but with occasional bright splashes of colour - blood, mainly.

The story is, of course, a classic. Wronged man who returns to seek revenge, but is also not exactly stable up top, so murders all and sundry with his 1337 barbering skillz. Of course in the end he ends up killing a woman without realising it's his wife, who he thought long dead. He then takes this out on the pie-making lady downstairs, who knew she was alive all along, by throwing her in the oven. He is then murdered in turn by the pie lady's assisstant, while the sailor he returned with elopes with his daughter.

All in all, very gory...It was brilliantly acted, particularly Depp and Bonham-Carter, who were very convincing as insane mass-murderers. Whether or not that's a good thing is probably debatable. Ali G was also very enjoyable in his role as a rival barber.

There was probably a little bit too much blood-spurting gore than was neccessary, but nonetheless is was an excellent film, and it gets four Cups of Sake out of five.

Film reviews: Charlie Wilson's War and Alien vs Predator: Requiem

Charlie Wilson's War
(Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Roberts)

I quite enjoyed this film. Can't claim to know much about the subject, Afghanistan during the Cold
War, so I don't know how realistic it was, but it was an entertaining film.
Basically, Charlie Wilson (Hanks) is a womanising drunkard who just happens to also be a US congressman. He's on a defence sub-comittee that controls the undercover supplies that the US is sending to the Afghans to fight against the Russians. The story is his fight for them to take it as a serious threat, and this is shown through him managing to increase their budget from $5million to $1billion throughout the course of the film.
Trying to get him to do this is Hoffman's character, an FBI (or one of the TLAs) dude. Clearly not an agent, to look at him... anyway, Hoffman steals the show. His character is rude, sarcastic, irreverant and awesome in every single way. Wilson can help him because, as he says, he's "the only US congressman who represents a district that dosn't want anything, so I can do a lot of favours."
Julia Roberts plays a Texan millionaire socialite who basically ties the whole thing together - provides the motivation for Wilson to do something about the situation by making him visit the refugee camps, etc. She wasn't bad, and fitted the part suprisingly well, I must admit.

Overall, an interesting film which hung together well, and made sense for all the characters to do everything they did, which always helps. Despite it not being my kind of thing, I really enjoyed it.

Three and a half Jugs of Sangria out of five. 



Alien vs Predator: Requiem
(Random people no one's ever heard of)

Bad continuity, no reasons behind anything that happened, no storyline to speak of, annoying characters, and quite possibly the worst final 15 minutes of any film ever. Spectacularly unimpressed, even so far as to not bothering to write any sort of proper review.

It gets one Skin of Dwarven Ale out of five for having the balls to kill the really hot girl with a shuriken through the boobs...

Started re-reading: Look to Windward and The Subtle Knife

Look to Windward (Started 1st Jan)
Iain M Banks

I'm re-reading this in anticipation of Banks' new Culture novel, Matter. It was one of my favourites in the series originally, although there were so many good books in the series, it got pushed down to maybe 4th or 5th best.
So far it's just as good as I remembered, although Banks' books always suffer on re-read - no idea why, but it's a bit of a shame. Still, it's been long enough that I don't remember the entire plot, although I have a vague recolection which I'm trying hard to ignore.


The Subtle Knife (Started 1st Jan)
Philip Pullman

After watching the Northern Lights film just before Christmas, I was keen to re-read the res of the Dark Materials series, so after a quick review of the first book, I hopped straight onto the second. It really is an excellent book, as I remembered, much better in both storyline and writing than the first. Still, this will take a back seat to Look to Windward for a while.



Of course, both will have to wait until after exams at this stage, which last until the 25th, and need serious amounts of revision. So it may be a couple of weeks until I update this with anything, which is not the best start, but I needed to start this off while I remembered.

Intro

I'm gonna use this more or less as a simple reading journal, to keep track of what I read throughout the year. I always end up forgetting what I've read when it comes to the end of a year, so hopefully this will come in useful. I'll also put up short reviews for each book, I hope.

At some point I might even get round to thinking of a good title for it.