Film Guide

If you’re looking for a restaurant to take your kids to, one that has a smorgasbord is great. Not only does it give enough variety that there is bound to be something for everyone, but there’s no waiting around for the food to be ordered and cooked. Of course the downside to a smorgasbord is that you’re not always going to have the best cooked food, and some times the combination that you end up putting on your plate isn’t exactly complimentary.

Crank 2 is a smorgasbord of a film. It has so many different ideas and visual styles – most of which don’t compliment each other – that it ends up looking like it was written by a couple of guys doing shots and snorting coke in a strip club.

One has to hope that Statham was contractually obliged to do a second Crank, but the surprising thing is that this seemingly mismatch of styles is actually written and directed by the same two guys responsible for the original Crank – a film that wasn’t Statham’s best work, but streets ahead of this muddled outing. The really disturbing thing is that I now have little faith in the upcoming Gerard Butler DVD, Gamer. It’s a film I’ve been looking forward to, but if these two crack-heads are responsible for it, I’m not so sure that it’s going to live up to my expectations.  Read the rest of this entry »

Gomorrah is a difficult film to review, mainly due to its complexity and its desire to reflect the reality of life in the crime infested poverty of Naples. On the surface it’s an agonisingly long film with no clear-cut storyline, and as such is a movie that many will find too arduous to keep up with. Those that persevere will be faced wit the challenge of deconstructing what they have seen, and it’s here that the movie becomes either a masterpiece or a disaster.

Based on a book by Robert Saviano, Gomorrah is a realistic reflection of life under the rule of the Napoli Mafia. Such was the intensity and honesty of the book; Saviano now has permanent police protection from the various mob families mentioned in his book.

A film however can never do justice to a book, so Director Matteo Garrone has focussed on five interwoven stories that represent a common slice of life. Told in a scattered manor with no care for the normal rules of story telling, trying to keep up with everything that is going on will probably take a number of viewings.

As the neighbourhood slides into all out war we begin to get a taste of the old adage; violence begets violence, as the one striking feature seems to be the never ending – and often very graphic – reality of violence and death as one group takes revenge on the other and such forth.  Read the rest of this entry »