Film Review: GONE (2012)

Director: Heitor Dhalia
Writers: Allison Burnett
Running time: 86 mins (approx)
Certification (UK): 15

Genre: Drama/Mystery/Thriller
UK Release date: 12^th April 2012

Watched on Sky+ Saturday 13^th April 2013.

PLEASE NOTE: THERE MAY BE UNINTENTIONAL SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW.

This is one of those films that looks good on the cover but once you get it home it doesn’t quite live up to expectations. It’s a good premise; an abduction and an unbelieved witness, but it’s been done before and, more importantly, it’s been done better before. It’s not all bad though, there are some good performances and there are a couple of interesting twists along the way. But I digress, here’s a very brief summary before I hit you with both barrels on the thoughts front.

When waitress Jill (Amanda Seyfried) returns from work one morning, she finds her sister, Molly (Emily Wickersham), is missing. This is particularly troubling for Jill because she had been abducted in the past and escaped. This has left her with psychological problems to which the police are not very sympathetic to. She believes the man that abducted her before has come back and taken Molly. She takes it to Detective Powers (Daniel Sunjata) who does not believe her (of course). So she decides to take matters into her own hands and sets out to find Molly herself. What follows is a chase; the Police looking for Jill and Jill looking for her sister and the man that abducted her. She even calls on the help of a colleague, Sharon Ames (Jennifer Carpenter). She believes the killer will strike at sundown and time is running out.

It’s a film that I believe is trying to be too clever for its own good; there are too many coincidences and blind alleys. On the performance front, I thought Amanda Seyfried did a good job but nobody else really stood out. Sadly I found it really hard to sympathise with her character because the threat appears to be in her head for much of the film. There’s sadly not much else I can say about it; I’ve maybe been a little generous with the score, but Portland did look good on the screen and the cinematography was pretty good over all. Not one I’ll be watching again but I’m glad I saw it for Seyfried’s performance if nothing else.

SteelMonster’s verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED

My score: 5.7/10.

IMDb Score: 5.7/10 (based on 18,311 votes when this review was written).
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1838544/

MetaScore: 36/100: (Based on 15 critic reviews provided by Metacritic.com at the time of going to press).

Rotten Tomatoes ‘Tomatometer’ Score: 11/100 (based on 62 reviews counted at the time of going to press).

Rotten Tomatoes ‘Audience’ Score: 43/100 (based on 34,738 user ratings counted at the time of going to press).
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gone_2012/

If you’re crazy enough… You can find me on Facebook at:
http://facebook.com/andy.steel3

FAVOURITE QUOTES:
Powers: She stuck with her story. And now every time a girl goes missing, she thinks it's her guy and she's in here breaking my balls.
Peter Hood: She can always move in with me. I like 'em a little crazy.
*
Custodian: What if you don't show up?
Jill: It means I'm dead.
*
Jill: Are you going to say hi?
Molly: Maybe tomorrow after my final. Right now I've got to become an expert on marginal productivity theory.
Jill: I'd ask you what that is, but then I'm afraid you'd tell me. 

Jill: What's a few meds between sisters?
*
Jill: He never existed. It was all in my head.

LINKS:
(Note: All were working at the time of going to press)
Trailer:

Film Review: IN TIME (2011)

Writer/Director: Andrew Niccol
Running time: 109 mins (approx)
Certification (UK): 12

Genre: Sci-Fi/Action/Adventure
UK Release date: 1^st November 2011

Watched on Sky+ Tuesday 20^th November 2012.

PLEASE NOTE: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW.

This is another film I have wanted to see for some time. I loved the ideas behind it and hoped it could deliver on the great promise it held. Sadly (for me at least) it only just made the mark but there were some great ideas and some interesting moments along the way (more of that later). The Writer/Director Andrew Niccol, who has worked on such films as; Gattaca, Lord of War and the rather excellent The Truman Show (amongst others), delivers here a ‘by the book’ action thriller with some elements of Robin Hood and Bonnie and Clyde thrown in. The interesting element is the fact that the currency everyone is trading in is the amount of time they have left to live. Here’s a very brief summary.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives in a poorer part of town with his mother, Rachel (Olivia Wilde). They find life hard, scraping enough time to last each day. A chance meeting with a rich man, Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer), who has a death wish leaves Will with over a hundred years to play with. His mother having ‘timed out’ he decides its time to get a little revenge on the rich who live in luxury in another zone of the city, New Greenwich. The police in the form of Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) are interested in talking to Will about the death of Hamilton. He makes it to New Greenwich and there he makes a large amount of time playing poker with the exceedingly wealthy Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser). With the police closing in Will kidnaps Weis’s daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried) and heads back home. And this is where I’ll leave it.

On the performance front, I thought Cillian Murphy and Amanda Seyfried stood out with Justin Timberlake lacking the required screen presence to carry it off (IMO). I thought Michael William Freeman who had a small role as bad guy Nardin did a good job of playing a very believable loathsome thug. With virtually everyone on screen being around the same age (25), barring the occasional kid, I found this one quite odd to look at (even a bit ageist! – just a joke, honest). It’s pretty well made with some great ideas behind the plot and even some great dialogue thrown in here and there but at the end of the day it just failed to get over that mark. It’s not that it’s a bad film, the problem is, it’s just not the great film it deserved to be.

SteelMonster’s verdict: RECOMMENDED… just.

My score: 6.4/10

IMDb Score: 6.6/10 (based on 127,563 votes at the time of going to press).
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/

MetaScore: 53/100: (Based on 36 critic reviews provided by Metacritic.com at the time of going to press).

Rotten Tomatoes ‘Tomatometer’ Score: 36/100 (based on 154 reviews counted at the time of going to press).

Rotten Tomatoes ‘Audience’ Score: 51/100 ‘Liked It’ (based on 59,584 user ratings counted at the time of going to press).
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_time/

If you’re crazy enough… You can find me on Facebook at:
http://facebook.com/andy.steel3

FAVOURITE QUOTES:
[first lines]
Will Salas: I don't have time. I don't have time to worry about how it happened. It is what it is. We're genetically engineered to stop aging at 25. The trouble is, we live only one more year, unless we can get more time. Time is now the currency. We earn it and spend it. The rich can live forever. And the rest of us? I just want to wake up with more time on my hand than hours in the day.

Henry Hamilton: How old are you? In real time?
Will Salas: 28.
Henry Hamilton: I'm 105.
Will Salas: Good for you. You won't see 106, you have too many more nights like tonight.
Henry Hamilton: You are right. But the day comes when you've had enough. Your mind can be spent, even if your body's not. We want to die. We need to.
Will Salas: That's your problem? You've been alive too long? You ever known anyone who's died?
Henry Hamilton: For a few to be immortal, many must die.
Will Salas: What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Henry Hamilton: You really don't know, do you? Everyone can't live forever. Where would we put them? Why do you think there are time zones? Why do you think taxes and prices go up the same day in the ghetto? The cost of living keeps rising to make sure people keep dying. How else could there be men with a million years while most live day to day? But the truth is... there's more than enough. No one has to die before their time. If you had as much time as I have on that clock, what would you do with it?
Will Salas: I'd stop watching it. I can tell you one thing. If I had all that time, I sure as hell wouldn't waste it.

Sylvia Weis: How does anyone live like this?
Will Salas: You don't generally sleep in.

Ulysse: You'd steal from your own father?
Sylvia Weis: Is it stealing if it's already stolen?

Will Salas: No one should be immortal if even one person has to die.

LINKS:
(Note: All were working at the time of going to press)
Official Facebook: In Time Movie Facebook Page
Official Twitter: http://twitter.com/InTimeMovie
Official Site: http://www.intimecasino.com/
Trailer:

Film Review: JENNIFER’S BODY (2009)

Director: Karyn Kusama
Writer: Diablo Cody
Running time: 99 mins (approx)
Certification (UK): 15

UK release date: 4th November 2009

Watched on Sky+ Saturday 6th November 2010.

PLEASE NOTE: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW.

If it wasn’t for the fact that this was written by Diablo Cody, writer of the rather excellent Juno (2007), I would probably have passed. I’m not a great fan of horror movies, unless they’re very very good, and so a teen horror flick is usually straight on the reject pile. But with Diablo Cody penning the words, how bad could it be? Well I’ll tell you after a short summary (as usual, summary haters please omit the next paragraph).

Jennifer Check and Needy Lesnicky have been friends since kindergarten and, although Jennifer is a cheerleader and Needy is a bit of a nerd, their friendship survived into high school. Needy has a steady boyfriend, Chip Dove, who is just an average teenager. Jennifer decides to take Needy to see a band she had seen on the internet called Low Shoulder. During the show a fire breaks out and several people are killed. Jennifer ends up going with the band in their van. Needy makes it home where she is met by Jennifer covered in blood. The next day Jennifer turns up at school behaving normal. This perplexes Needy and when, over the following weeks, several boys are found brutally murdered, she begins to put two and two together. Little does she know, Chip is becoming a target and time is running out.

Although the dialogue is just as snappy and cool as in Juno, this movie is sadly flawed. I just didn’t buy into the characters and found it all a little bit too ludicrous. A very decent performance though from Amanda Seyfried as Needy and honourable mentions go to Megan Fox as Jennifer, Johnny Simmons as Chip and Adam Brody as Nikolai Wolf.

I must say there is a really good score to this movie, some great indie and rock tracks, however, a great score does not a great movie make. There were one or two good moments in the film, but again, as a whole it just didn’t work for me. I guess if you’re a die hard fan of Megan Fox, then by all means go and see it, there are plenty of scenes with her wearing very little. Otherwise, not recommended.

My score: 5.2/10

LINKS:
IMDb Page: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1131734/
Trailer: http://uk.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK/video/imdb/vi4062052889/