Shameless Self Expression

Set in the year 2415, after 99% of the human race was wiped out by a plague, the population has become static (5 million survivors of the plague, still 5 million alive in 2415), thanks to Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas), essentially the big Kahuna in this totalitarian government. Enter Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron), one of a few rebels, given a mission by The Handler (Frances McDormand, with the worst hairdo of 2005), to kill Csokas and/or his second banana brother Jonny Lee Miller (pretty wasted). But once Aeon gets to Csokas, she realises that all is not as it seems. Sophie Okonedo is Aeon’s fellow assassin, who has extra hands where her feet should be (Why? Who cares? It’s cool!). Pete Postlethwaite’s role, meanwhile, is so cheerfully bizarre and totally indescribable that I’m not even going to try and write about it. Amelia Warner plays Aeon’s beloved and ill-fated sister. I’m not sure what the die-hard fans think, but as someone who occasionally watched the MTV short anime/ca...

Rachel McAdams plays an ambitious TV producer fired from her last gig, who lands a job producing the “Daybreak” morning show for a struggling (and fictitious) network. Her boss (Jeff Goldblum) is sceptical about her chances of boosting the ratings of the apparent worst-rated morning show on TV, but gives her a shot anyway. She gets off to a rough start by rubbing demanding TV anchor Diane Keaton the wrong way, and also cans lecherous co-anchor Ty Burrell. Her most risky move of all, however, is in replacing Burrell with seasoned ‘hard’ newsman Harrison Ford. Ford, previously happy to wait out the rest of his contract instead of having to resort to being wasted on material he considers beneath him. However, McAdams strongarms him (in a legal/contractual sense) into appearing on the show as a balance to Keaton’s plastic Martha Stewart/Katie Couric persona. The change is an extremely bumpy one as Ford stubbornly refuses to engage in any patter, let alone cover the ‘lighter’ stories, and...

Robert Downey Jr. plays a somewhat uptight architect on his way home from a business trip to make it back in time for his wife Michelle Monaghan’s impending birth. He unfortunately runs into socially inept wannabe actor Zach Galifianakis and has an ‘incident’ with him that gets them thrown off a plane and put on a ‘no fly’ list. Further complications result in Downey having little choice but to accept Galifianakis’ offer of a ride home in a rental car. A long, exhausting, supremely irritating ride with one of the most off-putting human beings you could ever meet (Except you couldn’t meet him, he’s nothing like any real human being out there you’ll ever meet). Welcome to Downey’s hell, and likely a sizeable portion of the audience’s too. Juliette Lewis plays a pot dealer, Jamie Foxx plays a family friend of Downey’s and Monaghan’s, and Danny McBride (surprisingly unfunny) plays a wheelchair-bound Iraq war veteran whom Downey offends at one point. I wasn’t a fan of Todd Phillips’ ...

Some of this documentary from filmmaker Nathan Frankowski is really not much more or less dubiously edited than another 2008 documentary touching on religion from the opposite perspective, “Religulous” , or even a Michael Moore film. The fact that I’m of a different political and theological persuasion to the one documented here doesn’t in and of itself make the film bad (though it makes it more uncomfortable, perhaps), nor can I chastise the film for its underhanded and misrepresentative tactics without at least mentioning that left-wing documentaries often do the same (And I will discuss those issues just as I have in my review of “Religulous” ). However, a lot of this film is such a flat-out piece of shit that my own atheist (or at least ‘Agnostic Atheist’) beliefs and viewpoint don’t really come into play at times. It’s just a blatantly dishonest film in some parts (possibly many). However, what has really inspired me to write this is what Frankowski and former Nixon speech...

Review: Burning Bright Taking its title from a William Blake poem (why?), Garret Dillahunt stars as a man who buys a tiger (from an uncredited Meat Loaf, no less!) for his own safari park. He uses money that was meant for his stepchildren, I might add. He keeps the animal locked up in a trailer, and being the idiot he is, keeps depriving it of food. Oh, that’s a smart idea, fella. One night, which has become dark and stormy due to an oncoming hurricane, sees the tiger come loose from its cage and entering the house, whilst Dillahunt’s stepdaughter Briana Evigan and her severely autistic brother Charlie Tahan sleep. Well, they won’t be sleeping for long I guess. Oh, and for some reason the house has been boarded up, with seemingly no room for escape. Did I mention that the tiger’s a bit hungry? This 2010 thriller from director Carlos Brooks (a relative newcomer) never quite worked for me, despite terrific use of the ‘central animal gone amok’. The set-up, for instance is the ...