London Film Fest 2011 Day 3 - 50/50

Anna Kendrick, Will Reiser and Seth Rogen present 50/50

50/50 is that most difficult of tricks to pull off - a movie that is both raucously funny and genuinely affecting.  For that we have to thank the loosely autiobiographical screenplay from Will Reiser and direction from Jonathan Levine (THE WACKNESS, ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE) that keeps the movie in delicate balance.  That balance is key - because this movie is about a young man struggling to beat an aggressive cancer, enduring chemo and surgery, and even then only with a 50/50 chance of survival. It's the subject matter of afternoon TV movies and melodramas.  What saves us (mostly) from emotional manipulation is the the brutal honesty and hilarity with which the topic is treated - everything from getting high on medical-strength weed, to trashing a flaky ex-girlfriends painting with eggs and knives, to exploiting having cancer to get laid by sympathetic chicks.  In other words, Reiser manages to avoid mawkishness (at least until the final fifteen minutes) by transforming his experience of cancer treatment into a "bromance" complete with adult humour.  To that end, the absolute hear of the flick is the relationship between Jospeh Gordon-Levitt as the cancer victim and all-round good egg, and Kyle - the kind of typically loud-mouthed, vulgar but heart-of-gold character that Seth Rogen always plays. The supporting cast is also first class, with Angelica Huston adding dramatic weight as Adam's mother; Anna Kendrick showing her comedic chops as Adam's therapist; and Bryce Dallas Howard deliciously shitty and cast against type as Adam's girlfriend.  If I have a criticism of this otherwise superb movie, it's that one might feel emotionally manipulated in the final reel.  I can see that intellectually, but I totally bought into the relationships in the film, was right their with Kyle in the waiting room during Adam's surgery, and enjoyed every minute of the experience.  

50/50 played Toronto and London 2011. It played Aspen where it won the Audience Award and  Hollywood where Joseph Gordon-Levitt won the Breakthrough Award for Actor of the Year. 50/50 opened in the USA in September. It opens in Portugal on November 10th; in France on November 16th; in Hong Kong and the Netherlands on November 17th; in the UK on November 25th; in Hungary and Japan on December 1st; in Sweden on December 2nd; andin Ireland on January 4th.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 2 - LET ME IN

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN was one of the best films I saw in 2009. A beautiful, delicate, fragile little love story between two pre-teens in suburban Sweden - finding comfort in each other's company. He is the child of divorce, bullied at school, ignored by everyone else, deeply, violently frustrated and in search of emotional warmth. She is a little kid without friends, dragged from town to town, isolated, odd, and surprised to find a misfit she can relate to - someone her own age.  The story had a sinister under-tone. She was a vampire, kept by an older man. But the presumption of paedophilia was over-turned - she was exploiting his weakness to satisfy her own craving for blood. It was this contrast - between her power over the older man and his twisted love for her - and the apparently more innocent but unreal relationship she had with the little boy - that made the film powerful. Its horror was emotional - rather than dependent on the old man murdering people to satisfy his young lover's blood-addiction.  

By contrast, Matt Reeves's (CLOVERFIELD) Hollywood remake is clumsy, garish and utterly without merit.  At every possible moment, Reeves amps up the horror and gore at the expense of the delicate emotional story.  The opening scene is straight from slasher-horror; the little girl is given the voice of Regan possessed in THE EXORICST, and CGI is used so clumsily as to give the murder-in-the-tunnel scene an unreal, almost comedic vibe that utterly took me out of the story.  The only scenes that worked were the quiet scenes on the climbing frame that were shot for shot remakes of the original. These scenes allowed Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee to shine in the central performances. But whenever Reeves' took the story in his own direction it became just another generic horror flick. 

Now, in fairness, I walked out of this film half an hour before the end because I was so disgusted with its dumbing down of the source material. That final half hour might have redeemed it. I doubt it. I should've listened to Bateman's prejudice about Hollywood remakes never adding anything to the original. I went in with an open mind, I assure you, but I was proved wrong.

Additional tags: Greig Fraser, Kodi Smit-McPhee,

LET ME IN played Toronto 2010 and is currently on release in the US, Canada, Belgium, France and Australia. It opens in Spain next week and in the UK and the Netherlands on November 5th. It opens in New Zealand on December 2nd.

Late review - LAND OF THE LOST

The problem with LAND OF THE LOST is that it doesn't know what kind of a movie it wants to be, and so it ends up being an nothing at all. It's not a kids adventure with crazy CGI in the manner of JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH. It's not a successful spoof of a much-loved TV series, in the manner of STARSKY AND HUTCH. It's not a faux-naif comedy in the manner of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. Bottom line: it's just not entertaining.

The writers and director have radically changed the source-text. Instead of having a normal family trapped in an alternate dimension, as in the TV show, they have Will Ferrell playing his typical "love-able" loser, this time manifested as a crack-pot scientist. Anna Friel plays his more sensible assistant. They take his latest invention into a decaying theme park ride, run by Danny McBride, playing that typical Danny McBride effeminate, wise-ass, and all three are sucked into another dimension where dinosaurs roam the sands, and a monkey-man called Chaka helps them out.

By this point, I was bored beyond belief. Stuff happens. I got to thinking about the Will Ferrel persona. I mean, there is something seriously creepy about watching a middle-aged man play his brand of narcissistic, self-destructive loser again and again. It's not funny so much as disturbing. He needs a new act and/or to be better constrained within a better-written script.

LAND OF THE LOST was released earlier this year in Canada, the US, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, Ukraine, New Zealand, Kuwait and Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Argentina, Chile, the UK, Spain and Mexico. It opens in September in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Norway, Romania, Sweden and Portugal. It opens in October in Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland. It opens in November in Denmark and in December on Italy, Belgium and France.