Nightcrawler

SF: Jake Gyllnelhaal is nothing short of creepy brilliant. This film manages to be darkly entertaining, twisted and strangely captivating. The trailer implies that this film this is nothing more than a standard thriller, mandatory twists and all, however the reality is much better. It never reduces it self to cheap thrills and predictability. The characters are complex, well portrayed and never dissolved to stock figures and while there are no traditional twists there are more than enough disturbing plot moves to keep you enthralled. Well worth a watch and one of the better films of this year so far. 8/10

50Eggs: N/A

DonkeyB: So this is where all the good films have gone! The poster (left) isn't a particularly good advert for the film, although you do spend a good portion of the film staring at Gyllenhaal's face, the striking thing are his eyes and in reality the star of the film (or at least co-star) is Los Angeles, in this way it reminded me of James Elroy and Michael Connelly novels (both set most of their books in LA), its dark and ambiguous and seems to inhabit the characters as much as they inhabit it. 8.5/10

Overall: 8.25/10

The bozos behind us on the way out "loved the mise en scène"

End of Watch

SF: After all the hype I had high hopes for this film. In many ways it was very satisfying, the acting is spot on and the setting seems to work, a good mix of serious, gritty, humour and at times disturbing. There are three particular moments that really surprised me (I'll let you guess which moments these are). I liked that the whole story didn't take place in one day or week but over a staged period of time. However there were just a few things that stopped this from being a great movie and left merely a good movie. Which is a shame as it had a lot of potential. Firstly the use of found footage as a medium, this is fine at times but if you are going to do this then you must stick to it relentlessly. Secondly not enough character depth and lastly not enough tension in the finale. 6.5/10

50Eggs: n/a

DonkeyB: It's an entertaining cop buddy movie. These guys see some truly horrific and depressing things, and do some downright stupid and undeniably brave things, which makes me think that maybe the film was trying to be gritty. My problem with it is it seemed too one dimensional, without ruining it ***SPOILER ALERT***, cops good, bad guys bad.

The other thing that film makers have to stop doing now is the found footage thing. It was getting old for me by the end of The Blair Witch Project but now it is seriously boring as a concept. It also fairly seriously undermines the story telling in this film, right from the start, I was thinking, 'ok so if Brian got that shot, who filmed that?' Why are the street gang filming what they do? What becomes of Brian's film project? Was he just making that up because he liked to film his life? He doesn't seem like that sort of character in the film.

We are surely not far away from the time when some bright spark film maker just out of film school makes a play within a play, with made up 'real found footage'. i.e. they shoot fake real footage to make a found footage film, but then use different actors who look a bit like the first set of fake real people to make the bits in between, so they can fake pretend that it is really a found footage film they have padded out with dramatisations and alternative angles.

I understood that concept I'm not sure anyone else will, which is good because that means they can't steal my up-its-own-arse-pretentious-film-school-project I'll never make.

6.5/10

Overall: 6.5/10

Project Jen- The Good Girl

A red letter day in Project Jen; for the first time ever, two reviews in one day.

I felt so awful after seeing The Bounty Hunter I had to eat chicken soup and watch The Good Girl. I feel as your reviewer (I watch these so you don't have to), I deserve special credit because The Good Girl was only rescued from its country retreat (my parents' attic) yesterday and made the long journey from storage to DVD rack along with The Complete West Wing and The Complete Quantum Leap.

For those reader who do not know me already, I must point out I would have rather watched any episodes of either of those fine television shows than any Jennifer Aniston movie.

That being said, I did already own The Good Girl before Project Jen was even conceived.
This is definitely Jennifer Aniston's best performance, she is entirely believable.
While the film isn't laugh-out-loud-funny, it does have a dose of black humour to it. Zooey Deschanel's character who I didn't remember at all is also funny.

This is the first time I have been able to write this since I started Project Jen; if you haven't seen this I think you should see it, rent it.

Rating: 4 Green Dresses

Source Code

SF: I'm confused, for me the physics makes no sense. But then I did fall asleep but I still sort of liked it so 6/10

50 Eggs: Oh this was great. The whole time I was thinking ' I hope they don't mess with the laws of physics here', but by the end it didn't matter. Surprise movie of the year for me. 9.5/10

DonkeyB: Trains; yay! [Spoiler alert] No radioactive material, oh wait actually maybe there was. Good. 7/10

Overall - 7.83/10