Once upon a midnight dreary

I love seeing films that I've never heard of before and thus have absolutley zero preconceptions about. It's super fun making judgements right from the title and as the opening credits run. And so my initial thoughts about this film were; 'Awesome! I love ravens. Ravens are great....'

This might actually be a rook, but the sentiment still stands.

The Raven (2012) 

Firstly, there's not enough ravens in this film. But there is John Cusack with an amusing beard as a down and out Edgar Allan Poe running around Victorian era Baltimore trying to trace a crazed obsessive serial killer who is reenacting Poe's fictional murders. It's all very dark and complex with a vaguely (and literally) tortured romance going on as well.

You're plunged into the scary dark world right from the onset. And having read none of Poe's fiction, I was totally unprepared for the grisly violence! I was feeling fairly creeped throughout the entire film as the body count notches up. Stylistically, it was like a time warped Se7en with touches of the game 'Hard Rain' for good measure the way you're led to consider 'whodunnit?'

John Cusack, as ever, is excellent and compelling. I don't really remember the rest of the cast, which goes to show... The script is surprisingly witty with some great exchanges between Poe and everyone he speaks to really. His is a very lovingly developed character.

The ending I thought was a very clever take on the actual facts surrounding Poe near the time of his death. 

Quoth the raven; it's a tongue!  

~Aim

Also when we saw this scene we both burst out. Is that a tongue?

~ Chris

We went to the cinema!

A film I actually experienced on something bigger than the 10.1" netbook screen! Seriously why do they even bother to mention the extra .1 of an inch? Anyway we stocked up on such cinema nibble staples such as PINEAPPLE and MELON before heading to Centertainment to enjoy the magic of cinema; an experience shared full of people talking and touching each other and using their phones and rustling all the shit they've brought with them. Oh, was that us? 


Prometheus (2012) 

I was horribly distracted by the light SHINING IN MY FACE for quite a lot of this film. But regardless, Prometheus was ok and I enjoyed various aspects of it but it was sadly disappointing overall with some pretty unforgivable plot holes. 


I loved Alien. It's one of my favouorite films of all time and I adore Ridley Scott. Perhaps because of these high hopes I felt the fail more keenly. I was also horribly teased and led on by the trailers which seemed to offer a more worthy companion to the original than how it actually was.


The bad bits: The stupid half-hashed characters. The stupid spirital 'meaning of the universe' plot.
Noomi Rapace as the nympho scientist religious fanatic with daddy issues.You're so annoying! How did this happen when you were so great in Girl with a Dragon Tattoo? And why are you making a face like a Mongolian hamster all the time.? And why wasn't Charlize Theron given more lines instead?

The good bits: Michael Fassbender as the android - This man is amazing, I want more of him. I'm going to watch every film he's ever done. Ridley Scotts's landscapes - You just know when you're watching a Scott film. The scares and creepy alien gore- I was pretty damn tense for quite a lot of the film. There's a lot of action, beautifully shot, with effortless effects and lots of disgusting, disturbing  violent alien bits. 


In all, I found it hard weighing it up and my initial feelings when I came out of the cinema can be summed up as 'meh' and 'but why?' If you can go and just enjoy the nice space romp with the cool scenery and nice nasty aliens then good for you. But if you were yearning after something more densely plotted, well characterised and challenging on par with Alien, then you'll be disappointed as I was. 


Grade: 





Go see it, just don't get too excited.


~Aim

Yet another ASDA film...

Yes, we found one more film on the ASDA top seller list. This time it was:

Babycall

It's a Norwegian film starring Swedish actress Noomi Rapace (who we had recently seen in Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which we will review very soon).
IMDB describes the film as following:

"After a baby monitor picks up another channel, Anna begins reliving the nightmare she'd recently escaped."

I would say that the film is a bit more complicated than that. The baby monitor is not as central in the film as this might indicate. Don't get me wrong it does play a vital part in the film although in what I would consider a sub plot.

If I were to summarise the film in a sentence it would be something like this:

"Haunted by her past Anna moves to a new place, she becomes friends with home-electronics salesman Helge while her psyche falls apart."

The film is ultimately scary, not in a jumping out of your seat and choking on your cheese curls way but in a more clever way. It gets you thinking what traumatic things can do to a person and gives you goosebumps when you finally get what has happened. Although...with that said the film holds out on everything until the very end and you sit and guess what really is going on, which ultimately becomes quite annoying.

Being Swedish I can also tell you that the dialogue is a bit strange from time to time. That could maybe be because it was a Norwegian writing the script. I don't see any reason why the main character would be Swedish when it's a Norwegian film, every other character in the film is and speaks Norwegian even Anna's child Anders.

The acting is through-out the film good with some really low-marks, especially in the scenes with children.

Don't get fooled by the slow pace of the film, it's really worth it in the end. Also don't reject it because it's not in English, subtitles are available.

Grade:

~ Chris