Movies I have watched

One of the dubious joys of having Sky Plus is that I have recorded a whole bunch of films that aren't quite good enough to bother seeing at the cinema, or buying on DVD, but just good enough to watch when I've got nothing better to do. However, the hard disk in my Sky box is now 50% full, so I'm feeling the need to get and watch a few of these things, despite being quite busy.

Anyway, I shall now review the films I watched this weekend, so you don't need to bother seeing them.

Cloverfield: Okay, this wasn't on Sky. However, I did go to see it at the cinema at the weekend, and so shall review it anyway. It's basically "Godzilla Attacks New York", filmed entirely in the 'cam' style of "Blair Witch Project". So, not only is it a bad film, but it also set off my motion sickness something fierce. Before they even got to the birthday party scene (about 10 minutes into the film), I was already doubting my ability to make it through. However, I did find that it was much easier viewing if I closed my eyes.

Anyway, yeah, it's a bad film. Mercifully, it is only 74 minutes, from the start to the "Directed by" credit coming up. But, as with so many recent films, it runs afoul of my "abbreviated storytelling" rant: it was 22 minutes before the first evidence of the monster is heard. Apparently, it's important to have lots of character-building for random people who are never in the film again.

But where the whole experience was really taking the piss is that there were 33 minutes of adverts and trailers before the film even began. So, less than half of my cinema ticket was the fun monster-packed thrill-ride I expected.

And it gave me the boak. Avoid.

Flushed Away: It's about a pampered pet mouse who gets flushed down the toilet, and finds himself in the mousy underbelly of London. He tries to get back home. And there are French ninja frogs after him.

I liked this film a great deal.

However, I must say that it did stretch my suspension of disbelief just a tad that the crux of the film revolved around a World Cup final between England and Germany. Like that's likely. Still, they did redeem it rather with the end result, which was so utterly right as to forgive everything.

Let's Go To Prison: An ex-con plots revenge on the judge who ruined his life, only to find he died three days previously. So, he instead frames the judge's son and arranges to share a cell with him.

Does that sound funny? Well, let me just point out that it's a whole lot funnier than anything else in this supposed 'comedy'.

A Scanner Darkly: Another animation, this one aimed at adults, this is an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story, and is about drugs, paranoia and madness. It's really quite freaky, not least because of the particular animation style, which sees Keanu Reeves' character looking recognisably like Keanu, and the same being true for the other characters and their respective voice talents.

Anyway, it was a very uncomfortable viewing experience, but a very good film for all of that.

Idiocracy: A guy who has been carefully selected as being entirely average is cryogenically frozen for 500 years, and wakes to find himself the smartest man on Earth, in this very disturbing documentary by the makers of Beavis and Butthead.

I'm just not sure quite how they managed to film things that haven't happened yet...

Seriously, though, this is a comedy about the premise given above, and makes a disturbingly plausible case that that might well be the state of affairs (except that I suspect if things were to go in that direction, we'd somehow manage to wipe ourselves out first, so that's something to look forward to). Unfortunately, while the premise was disturbing, the comedy itself ran out of steam very quickly. After the line about the movie "Ass" (which was exactly what it said on the tin) winning eight Oscars, including Best Screenplay, there really wasn't much left to laugh about.

And so... out of the five movies I watched, I can only really recommend two. "Idiocracy" is okay, if you're in the mood for some cheap laughs at stupid people, but "Let's Go To Prison" and "Cloverfield" are to be avoided. "Flushed Away" and "A Scanner Darkly" are good, though.