Sherlock Holmes

The much anticipated Sherlock Holmes has been criticized a lot on other blogs. I wanted to see it for myself though because the trailer looked very promising. But I have to agree, it is not a brilliant film.

Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes) is very well casted. He always seems quick witted and he is a bit of a bad boy. Perfect. Jude Law (Dr. Watson) would not have been who I would have casted but he is really good in the role. The slightly homosexual chemistry between the two works very well. The way it is filmed is quite nice. It has a dark and mysterious feel to it. What I didn’t like was that the fighting scenes with Holmes were always shown twice. Once in slow motion where Holmes is planning what he will do and knows exactly what impact it will have on the other person and then its shown again when he executes his plan. This would have been fine if he had failed once or something unexpected would have happened once. This way it was just a waste of time.

What really killed the film was the plot. It was boring, long and everything was foreseeable. Holmes also never had a moment where he actually figures something out in front of the camera. He always already knows everything. In my view, this film had everything going for it, it just wasn’t well told. This seems to be the problem with a lot of the recent films. Or maybe we, as a society, have seen too many films already and nothing can really surprise us anymore. I surely hope not though!

It’s Complicated

You might think that this is a strange mixture for a double feature but I can explain it: We planned to watch The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnussus as a second film but it was screened on another floor and we couldn’t sneak into it. It’s Complicated was the only other film starting at that time. Obviously I am not the target audience for this film at all and from the first time I saw the preview for it I thought it would be a horrible film. So why did we go into the screening anyway? I am a movie geek, what can I say.

To my complete surprise it turned out to be a really sweet and funny film. Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Aec Baldwin) have been divorced for ten years and Jake is remarried to a much younger woman. Jane has come to terms with her life as a single woman and has no real interest in meeting men anymore. At their son’s graduation Jane and Jake somehow end up sleeping together which then turns into a full blown affair. At the same time Jane’s architect Adam (Steve Martin) start courting her.

Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin are really fun in this movie. Baldwin surprised me a lot. He does comedy really well and is perfectly casted. Even though he is playing an unsympathetic guy, he is still likable. Steve Martin is a very strange choice for this role. He is very serious and straight. Not his normal goofy self. I had no idea he could be serious. Although he looks like he has been lifted which is a bit strange. The trio works well together. John Krasinski as Meryl Streeps son in law is also hilarious. Although he has been in a lot of movies that I have seen, I didn’t really notice him until I saw Away We Go. He is great though and  I am hoping to see him in more films as a leading character soon.

The plot itself is rather uninteresting. I have seen this exact story in plenty of other films. But It’s Complicated gets some points for being entirely about people in their 50’s and 60’s. I am sure that there are films about that age group but I really can’t remember one right now.  Even though its not a perfectly made film, it is fun to watch and I know plenty of people (who are more the target audience then I am) who would enjoy watching it.

Tags: Alec Baldwin, John Krasinski, Jude Law, Meryl Streep, Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes, Steve Martin

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 12:04 am and is filed under !Must See!, American, British, Watched at the Cinema. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.