filmfan's diary

Since Walk Hard, I've pretty much gorged myself on film. I've seen six movies all at Vue Gunwharf Quays, helped greatly by their Orange Wednesdays 2 for 1 scheme and I will now attempt to review them all. Crazy? Maybe.

First up was Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I saw this and then No Country for Old Men - perhaps not a very clever idea. Anyway, Sweeney Todd is a film version of the stage musical by Stephen Sondheim. Therefore everyone sings what they'd be better off saying. This doesn't get old quite as quickly as you may expect, and leaves you plenty of time to love/hate Johnny Depp's singing in the title role. The songs are actually quite funny, despite their gory subject matter, but the best is a duet by Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (acting in her fifth film with hubby Tim Burton in the Director's chair) as Mrs. Lovett a pie shop owner. With cameos from Sacha Baron Cohen (very good) and Anthony Head (blink and you'll miss him), plus the likes of Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall in bigger, creepier roles Sweeney Todd is bloody good, in every sense, but not for the squeamish. 

Minutes later and I'm sat in front of beautiful Texan landscapes as Tommy Lee Jones (ageing local sheriff trying to make sense of a changing world) is on the trail of Josh Brolin (wisecracking opportunist crook) who is being hunted by Javier Bardem (the scariest man - and haircut - of the year)because Brolin stole a case of drug-money. This is a Coen brothers film, and as such requires a bit of interpretation. This is great. I'm not sure if I've seen a Coen brothers film before, least not all the way through, but I like them. I ought to see more of their work. 

So, an unsettling, nerve-jangling, blood-letting evening, all in all.

Perhaps ignoring the headrush of seeing two films back-to-back in the cinema, perhaps encouraging it, I saw Cloverfield and Juno the following Saturday. 

Each recommended by almost all the critics, Cloverfield and Juno share an odd sort of anti-Hollywood sentiment. Cloverfield is a relatively small budget monster movie which focuses on the human story without skimping on the CGI. Whilst Juno couldn't be more independent if it wore a t-shirt with 'Fuck you I'm independent' written on it in big homemade lettering. 

Cloverfield is best known for being the film with THAT mind-blowing trailer. Y'know the one where a party is interrupted by the Statue of Liberty's severed head crashing into the buildings and streets outside. This was just the starting point for fans of Lost-creator J. J. Abram's work. His fans are a different breed. They will pick apart and analyse every snippet of anything even rumoured to be connected to one of J. J's projects. So, if you wanted to, you could follow the big fact hunt for the back-story for Cloverfield. You'd encounter a suspicious slush drinks company, an eco-terrorist organisation and about half a dozen Myspace accounts for the party-going characters. 

I followed all this second-hand, through CloverfieldClues, after I was pointed to the website 1-18-08.com, one of the key parts of the massive online marketing campaign.

It lives up to much of its own hype, and if you've seen it, you too can ponder the possibility of a sequel! I like the idea of a fake documentary which is interrupted during filming by another attack. Perhaps the monster's still alive; perhaps it left something deadly in its wake.

Juno, as you'll have guessed from my earlier uber-blog is a pretty big deal. I wanted to see it almost a month before its ful...