I love how in New York you only have to show your ticket at the entrance of the cinema and you can then watch as many films as you want (I’m not sure you are allowed to, but since nobody checks, who cares?!).

Public Enemies

Before I get into the story of this movie, let me just say a few words about the way it was filmed because that was a big problem I had with it. IMDb says that it was partly shot on 35mm and partly on HDTV but it looked like it was all shot with HD cameras. A large part of this film actually looked like it was shot with a private HD camera. The look of the film was absolutely terrible! I don’t know which parts they are supposed to have shot with 35mm, but the pictures were lacking in depth and darkness throughout. In some pan shots it even looked like the film was slightly pixelated. I know film is expensive, but if you want to make a 1930’s gangster movie, invest in it! HD just takes the mystery out of it and really doesn’t do the actors any favors. It just didn’t look like a quality film.

Everyone knows who John Dillinger was and quite a few films about him already exist. Public Enemies isn’t telling a new story but it is telling the story well. Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cottilard are, of course, fantastic. The film is rather long, though, and strangely uneventful. There is A LOT of shooting going on which I found quite boring because it’s so repetitive. I am sure there are a lot of people who love Public Enemies (it got a ridiculously high rating on IMDb), but for me it wasn’t anything special. It felt like I had already seen this film with a slightly different story and different actors.

Brüno

First of all, I loved Borat and was really looking forward to watching Brüno. But it really sucked. It seemed like Sacha Baron Cohen was desperately trying to create something more outrageous than Borat and failed miserably. The film is overly obscene and is lacking in story. The story is very close to Borat: Brüno loses his assistant (and lover) and has to make it on his own, he is traveling through America on a mission (he wants to become world famous) and at some point has a complete meltdown and has to sleep on the streets because he has run out of money — there is always very dramatic music to Brüno’s misery. It’s like Sacha took the same ingredients of Borat and mixed it up with a new character and some serious toilet humor. That just isn’t enough. It has its funny moments but it will probably be forgotten in a couple of years.

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in so long. I have been watching films and will be writing reviews on them soon. I promise

I went to London over the weekend to visit some friends. London is such a great city and I always love looking for film settings there (the blue door from Notting Hill, pretty much every scene from Match Point and so on). While my friend and I were having lunch near the Columbia Road flower market this weekend, we spotted Keira Knightly and her actor boyfriend Rupert Friend. This part of London is so full of quirkily dressed people that they really didn’t stand out. Every other person there could have been a star. It’s always fun to see actors in real life. Especially when they fit so wonderfully into their surroundings. It makes them more human. Keira looked a lot nicer and prettier in real life than in the films (I personally don’t like her as an actress), but she did look unnaturally skinny.

The Woman in Black

We went to see the play The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre near Covent Garden. It turned out to be the 20th Anniversary for this play to be shown at that theatre. It is a ghost story about a solicitor who is trying to tell his family about a time in his life where he encountered a ghost a long time ago. A young theatre director helps the now old man to make the story more interesting for his audience.

The entire play consists of these two men and a ghost woman in black who only comes on stage occasionally. The actors have to be incredibly good to keep the audience’s attention through the entire play, and they were. I didn’t actually expect to be scared in a play, but it was quite freaky. A lot of it was down to rather loud sound effects and sudden appearances of the woman. It was a lot of fun watching the play and getting scared by it. What I also really enjoyed was that the producer came onto the stage after the play and gave a short speech because of the anniversary. He was really funny and it felt special to have seen the play that evening.

Terminator Salvation

I got talked into watching this film by two of my old housemates from University (two boys as you can guess) and the film just really sucked (sorry Jon and Dave, if you are reading this…). I thought Christian Bale would be enough to enjoy the movie but he was terrible. All he did was use his intense dark Batman-voice and look tough. And then he hit a couple of guys. That’s it. And he is not even shown very often. It’s mostly about Sam Worthington’s character. Oh, and the story was: humans fighting against machines. This should not be the story of a Terminator film, because it is the setting. There should be a story around this setting. If I had a rating system, I would probably give this film a 1/5 (one for the special effects). Alright, that’s enough ranting, just take my advice and don’t watch it.