Edge of Darkness
Martin Campbell | USA | 2009
117 min
Underneath the generic sounding title and a misleading advertising campaign, Edge of Darkness is a talky political thriller with uncommon depth. It is packaged as a revenge flick, but finds firm footing as a vehicle signaling Mel Gibson’s return after an eight year hiatus. continue reading »»
Invictus
Clint Eastwood | USA | 2009
133 min
Invictus is a triumphant fusion of sports film and historical drama. Like the latter it serves as a placeholder of a period, recreating an era from the recent past but also retaining all of the genre conventions viewers have come to expect from the former. The film isn’t particularly well balanced, nor is it anything but simplistic in its outcome, but none of this prevents it from being both rousing as a sports film and stirring as a drama. continue reading »»
The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow | USA | 2009
131 min
In the risky business of fighting wars, the riskiest tasks belong to the bomb disposal squad of Bravo Company at Camp Victory. The Hurt Locker zeroes on these soldiers in Iraq, thrusting us dead centre in the midst of one bravura bomb sequence after the other. The film is a collection of taut vignettes and up until its last act where it gets personal, remains fairly objective and observant without any obvious sermonizing. continue reading »»
Up In The Air
Jason Reitman | USA | 2009
109 min
Up in the Air finds Clooney as a “career transition specialist”. His work requires him to travel frequently, feeling little remorse in letting go of people earmarked for downsizing by companies too afraid to handle them personally, because of the mess. Welcome to another view of the modern world by way of director Jason Reitman, him of Juno and Thank You for Smoking fame. continue reading »»
Nine
Rob Marshall | USA | 2009
118 min
Nine is a cinematic burlesque show. It stumbles into the spotlight as a treatise on art and cinema and the difficulty of filmmaking, but is really nothing more than an awful excuse to bring together on the big screen one named actor and a bunch of famed beauties. Based on a stage musical, itself based on Federico Fellini’s seminal 8 ½, Nine suffers from a grim setting, unmemorable songs, a wayward script, but mostly due to the miscasting of Daniel Day Lewis in the lead role. continue reading »»
Avatar
James Cameron | USA | 2009
162 min
Know this fact: director James Cameron has made better films than Avatar. This is not to say that Avatar is a failure; it is simply overhyped as Cameron’s return to filmmaking after he proclaimed himself King of the World over a decade ago. Avatar has an emptiness about it that cannot compensate for the lack of sufficient live motion scenes. While the planet of Pandora is vividly realised, it evokes cheerless memories of the world created by the Wachowski’s in latter films of The Matrix trilogy, one level above animation and every bit heavy laden with as much wall-to-wall CGI as your largest IMAX screen can contain. continue reading »»
Avatar
James Cameron | USA | 2009
162 min
December of 2009 is a fantastic time for the release of Avatar, mainly because it has been a horrible year for big-budget mainstream films that everyone can gather around and love. The IMAX Dubai showing I went to had people applaud at the end, and while it is something I have always found a bit silly (it’s okay if the crew is at the showing, but otherwise…), it does show the enthusiasm of the general public. Avatar is a great cinematic experience. continue reading »»
With a sparse running time of 88-minutes, director Fleischer doesn’t present his offering without any semblance of seriousness. Smartly paced and punctuated with quirky ideas and anecdotes, the movie draws out laughter and compels you to enjoy the fun and splatter unfolding on-screen. Owing to a vague opening and an ambiguous ending, Zombieland feels like the middle-chapter in an ongoing series of stories set within the same world – perhaps with the same people, or another bunch of survivors elsewhere. The endearing characters, without the imposed constraints of chronology, elevate Zombieland from being yet another zombie-movie comedy to what is a macabre, fun-filled experience at the cinemas, quite easily one of the year’s best.
Zombieland
Rubin Fleischer | USA | 2009
88 min
Much can be said about what makes Zombieland such a good movie. To put it quite simply, it’s an ingenious and whimsical revival of a dying genre, made for our post modern generation. It also features the best cameo this side of Tropic Thunder. Most importantly however, it stars a maverick, trigger-happy Woody Harrelson who, if there ever was one, is a natural born zombie-killer. continue reading »»
