well, thanks to the joys of DVD (and a number of Michele's "rubbish" TV shows finishing), we have been able to catch up on one or two (well, two) 2009 movie releases at last!
first up is the apparently "controversial" Brüno. following on from Ali G and Borat, this is Sasha Baron Cohen's third attempt at effectively the same thing - using social, cultural stereotypes to trick people into given preposterous, embarrassing answers to carefully worded/loaded questions. nothing new, then, but the lack of originality doesn't stop it being sporadically rather funny.
the last two Cohen characters had to progressively be more outrageous to get laughs, and this is something that reaches a presumed zenith in this film. the amount of times one gets to see Brüno sans clothes, let alone engaged in various "activities", presumably tested the patience of what you could get away with showing in a mainstream film, and it's hard to foresee circumstances where the content of this, if not the humour, is topped.
a great many of the incidents in the film seem contrived and staged, but you would hope that one or two of the moments that cause you to laugh out loud are genuine incidents of catching people off-guard. as outrageous and outlandish as some of the moments are to get laughs, it is one of the more simple incidents - the "exclusive interview with Harrison Ford" that Brüno obtains - which gets the biggest laughs. on the basis of that, i would suggest that Sasha Baron Cohen is talented and intelligent enough to venture into less extreme territory next time but still produce bellyaching laughs. this is no bad thing.
next up is a film that i have been looking forward to seeing for what feels like the majority of the year, Moon. it's the debut film from the admired Duncan Jones (for details of his famous father, see "rest of internet") and features the increasingly impressive Sam Rockwell, as well as (sort of) Kevin Spacey. in the case of the latter, it's hard to dislike Spacey, but he has been making it easy to do just this with some really bad choices of films of late.
now, i am going to do my best to make this review spoiler-free, but with such a minimalist plot, it's going to be tricky......
in essence, Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a resource engineer alone on the Moon bar a computer assistant, GERTY (Kevin Spacey), who mines the requirements to keep Earth's energy supplies going and sends them back to the world. His three year shift doing this is coming to a close, and then he makes some discoveries......
..and that's all i dare say, really. with such limited scope (and this is not meant as a bad comment) it's hard to discuss the film without giving anything away, and it's that good i'd rather let all and sundry watch and enjoy for what it is rather than telling them why!
there are things to say about the film that don't give anything away. like, for instance, what a great talent Duncan Jones is. he has in interviews not objected to discussing his father, David Bowie, at all - in confidence he says "one day it won't be people saying Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, it will be people saying Duncan Jones, whose father is a singer". it was quite a wait to see this film, i very much look forward to his next. and then there's Sam Rockwell. i have yet to see a bad performance from him (this film, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind and Choke being the outstanding works), surely it's only a matter of time before he is spoken of as one of the greatest actors of this generation.
well, there you go. two films that are in no way a waste of 90 minutes for you to consider! as we are coming up to "best of the year list" time, i would imagine Moon is at the top, unless i remember something or other i saw earlier on!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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