20160215: Comedy Review--What's in a Name

Name: What's in a Name? (2012)
IMDb: link to What's in a Name? page

Genres: Drama   Country of origin: France.

Cast: Patrick Bruel as Vincent, Valérie Benguigui as Élisabeth, Charles Berling as Pierre, Guillaume de Tonquedec as Claude, Judith El Zein as Anna, Françoise Fabian as Françoise.

Written and directed by: Alexandre de La Patellièrre, Matthieu Delaporte.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The film starts in the 9th arrondissement in Paris.  Pierre and Élisabeth (called Babu by most) are hosting a small dinner party.  The daughter and son hopefully will stay asleep.  Babu's brother Vincent arrives, and draws interest in the name of his pre-natal son with his wife. Trombonist and long time family friend Claude joins the group.  Considerably later, Vincent's wife Anna arrives.

Delineation of conflicts:
Vincent's choice for the son's name is quite offensive, and a debate rages over it.  Much emotional heat is generated as a result; tempers warm more than a bit.

Later, Vincent admits that the announced name was a joke, but the hurt feelings remain.  Worse, the admission comes only after Vincent and Pierre have wounded each other with words.  The group continues skewering each other with sharp speech.

Resolution: Can the group resume their usual warm relationships?  Several harsh buried truths surface during the verbal fencing.

One line summary: Battle royale with words.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 9/10 Almost all the footage was of interior shots, and was especially well done.

Sound: 8/10 Well done, though a little minimalist.

Acting: 10/10 Fine all around.

Screenplay: 9/10 This film runs like a play: lots of dialog, well planned, well delivered, almost all in one room.  Dialog is the centre of the movie, and it is executed very well.

Final rating: 9/10 

20150523: Horror Review--Strippers Vs. Werewolves

Strippers Vs. Werewolves

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: Strippers Vs. Werewolves
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.1/10 (1,456 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   29% based on 7 critics' ratings
   14% of users liked it, from 216 viewer ratings
   Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2012-04-27
6. Production Companies: Black & Blue Films
7. Tagline: No tagline found.


8. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 93 minutes.
11. Genres: Comedy, Horror, Foreign


12. Directed by: Jonathan Glendening.  Written by: Pat Higgins


13. Starring: Adele Silver as Justice, Barbara Nedeljakova as Raven, Billy Murray as Ferris, Martin Compston as Scott, Sarah Douglas as Jeanette, Steven Berkoff as Flett, Alan Ford as Harry, Martin Kemp as Mickey, Lucy Pinder as Vampire Bride, Robert Englund as Tapper, Lysette Anthony as Basildon Cinemagoer.


14. TMDb overview: Mickey, who happens to be a werewolf and a crime boss, gets all worked up and hairy during a private dance at a strip club. Justice, the dancer, grabs the nearest weapon and lands a fatal blow: her silver fountain pen right through Mickey's wolfed-out eye. This ignites a small-scale war between Mickey's group of werewolf mobsters and the sultry strippers of Vixens.


2. Setup and Plot


1. At first I thought I was trapped in a badly edited version of Guy Ritchie's brilliant piece, Snatch (2000).  Then I realised that the seasoned, talented cast was missing as was the fine screenplay and tight direction.  (Well, Alan Ford was in both films, as Brick Top in Snatch, as Harry in this film.) The artwork for the credits looked a little too familiar, and the props, language, and atmosphere seemed recycled.


2. Instead of the wealth of fun and wry humour of Snatch, one has a jumbled mess about a deadly feud between those who work at a strip club and a gang of criminal werewolves.  The fake blood was unconvincing, the fights were ridiculously bad, and the gratuitous full frontal female nudity (first third of the film) was 12 on a scale of 1 to 10.  The werewolf makeup was not well executed, and I could have done without the werewolves masturbating.  


3. On the positive side, Robert England's performance was good, but also quite short.  Lysette Anthony was OK in a cameo, and there were a few laughs.


3. Conclusions
1. Did I identify with any of the characters? No. Did I empathise with any? No. Were the few laughs worth the overall low quality of the film? No. Was the climactic battle interesting? Well, no.


2. One line summary: No werewolves were harmed during the making of this motion picture.


3. One of ten


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 2/10 The sets were particularly badly done.  The use of split screen was more annoying than helpful.  The injected cartoon slides really marked this film as badly done.


2. Sound: 5/10 I could hear the dialog, such as it was.  The music was irritating.


3. Acting: 3/10 Sarah Douglas, Robert Englund, and Lysette Anthony were fine, but they did not portray the main characters.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 The main failure.

20130906: Thriller Review--Hate Story

Name: Hate Story (2012)
IMDb: link to Hate Story page

Genres: Thriller, Crime.  Country of origin: India.

Cast: Paoli Dam as Kaavya Krishna (the protagonist), Ghishan Deviaiah as Siddharth Dhanrajgir (her tormentor), Nikhil Dwivedi as Vicky (Kaavya's ally), Joy Sengupta as Rajdev.

Directed by: Vivek Agnihotri.   Written by: Vikram Bhatt, Rohit Malhotra.

The Three Acts: 

The initial tableaux:
Journalist Kaavya exposes corruption between an industrialist and a judge regarding fixing cement prices.  The industrialist strikes back, by offering her a job she could not refuse, then romancing her, including a rather large stone on a ring, plus other expensive items. Then he rejects her: the job is gone, the 'romance' was a ploy, and he's not done screwing her over yet. First off, her job search is a bust.

Her pregnancy by Sid does not change his campaign against her.  He lures her outside her apartment, then gives her something like chloroform to knock her out. Thugs transport her to a cheap clinic to abort the fetus forcibly, to sterilize her without consent, then to leave her with no assets in the middle of nowhere.  She barely gets in touch with her family, who save her life, but then rejects her upon finding out her recent story.

Delineation of conflicts:
Kaavya wants revenge against Sid: physical retribution, emotional retribution, retribution against his reputation and wealth.  Sid, being a born bully, figures that the victim is the cause of the problem, and wishes to crush Kaavya into the deepest places of degradation and despair.

Kaavya becomes a high class prostitute to gain information and leverage against Sid.  Sid employs thugs and surveillance to counter her efforts and to damage her further.

Resolution:
The two principals deal considerable damage to each other.  Who remains standing at the end?

One line summary: Revenge, prostitution, government corruption, and industrial spying in modern India.

Statistics

Cinematography: 8/10 The camera work varies from just competent to almost glorious.

Sound: 4/10 The interjected music routines were more than a bit intrusive, unlikely, and off-putting.

Acting: 5/10 This was a mixed bag.  Some of the minor players are indifferent.   Joy Sengupta was fairly wooden, for instance.  Ghishan Deviaiah's Jekyll and Hyde performance was not convincing.  On the other hand, Nikhil Dwivedi was fine as Vicky, and Paoli Dam was wonderful as Kaavya.

Screenplay: 5/10 It is difficult to take this one seriously.  That is, did you just do that?  Seriously?  The plot's twists and turns were frequent and about 50 percent of them were too unlikely to believe. The house of cards the Sid character had constructed was just too unwieldy to hold up to any kind of scrutiny.

Final Rating: 5/10

20130802_b: Horror Film Review--Shutter (Thailand)

Shutter

1. Context
1. Hulu had the 2004 version, not the 2008 version with Joshua Jackson.
2. Produced in Thailand, live action theatrical film, 97 minutes, horror, mystery.
3. IMDB rated this one at  7.0/10.0 aggregate from ratings of 21,992 users.
4. Rotten Tomatoes rated it at 56%, 'no consensus yet.'
5. The spoken word is in Thai, with English subtitles.  Hulu streamed the film in 'high' quality.


2. Initial tableaux
1. Early in the film, Jane and Tun drive home from a drinking bout with some of his friends.  The road is mostly empty.  When Jane takes her eyes off the road for a few seconds, she runs over a woman.  When a truck approaches, Tun convinces Jane to drive off.
2. It would seem that was their first mistake.
3. Afterwards, Tun's photos tend to have light streaks in them.  Both of them start to have horrifying dreams.  They start to get more information.  They check where the accident occurred; apparently there was no accident.  They check the local expert on photography, who claims it's just double exposure, and shows Tun similar effects in his own photos.  They push on to a magazine that specialises in 'supernatural' ghost images.  The editor explains how most of the fakes are made.  Then he recommends that they try to check using a Polaroid camera, which might be harder to create fakes with.  As they continue to investigate, they keep picking up ghostly images, mirages, and dreams.


3. Conflicts, resolution
1. By half way through the film, three of the men who were at the initial drinking party have committed suicide.  The mystery deepens.  Jane finds a photo of Tun with an earlier lover, Natre.  Jane pries the details out of him.  The details are not pretty, involve the dead men and Natre, and provide a start for resolving the mystery.
2. They visit Natre's mother, who keeps Natre's corpse in her old bedroom.  They convince the mother to hold a formal funeral for her.  That was not enough to bring peace to the principal characters.
3. A new level of weirdness starts around 70 minutes into the film.  Tun's torment accelerates.  Natre is cremated, and that seems to end the problems.  Later, Jane gets back some new photo prints, including ghost images, and more old truths surface.
4. Tun does not escape the consequences of past actions after all.


4. I rate this one as 8/10.
1. The camera work was a bit fuzzy 7/10
2. sound was good 8/10
3. the acting fine 9/10
4. the screenplay was good: bringing the mystery home was well done. 10/10
5. One line summary: Ghost contacts guilty parties through photography.