October 2007 Archives

We were bored last night and decided to find a pay movie to watch on Sky. I spotted "Shooter" and the plot looked pretty average but the presence of Mark Wahlberg convinced me to give it a go.

It opens with him as US Army sniper Bob Lee Swagger with his spotter in Ethiopia taking out some "baddies" from a hilltop. Within seconds we are in a thrilling firefight and they are up against huge odds. The support team decides to dump them and exits their base because it's actually an illegal mission. A helicopter gunship appears and kills the spotter. Swagger takes it out with some enormous sniper gun.

It cuts to three years later and he lives in the mountains alone with his dog deeply disillusioned with his country. CIA-style spook Danny Glover appears to ask for a favour.

He claims that there will be a sniper attempt on the president in one of three locations over the next two weeks from a distance of over a mile. Could Swagger help them figure out where the attack will happen from?

After some arguing he agrees and does a recce of each location. He decides it will happy in Philly from one of several vantage points and they convince him to be there to help out on the day.

You can guess what happens next. It's all a setup to pin the assassination on him. A shot goes off from a remote controlled rifle and he is shot by a crooked cop at the same time. He escapes and this gives us a fantastic chase scene.

He ends up at the house of his dead spotters wife who is convinced of his good intentions and deals with bullets etc. The detail of him using common household products to keep himself alive really adds to the movie.

We get a few more wonderful action sequences with the attack on the ranch of one of the real baddies being particularly good. There is also plenty of wit and humour throughout which is ruined slightly by everyone talking in a throaty Alec Baldwin style (particularly Danny Glover). I missed a lot of what they were saying as a result.

The snowy mountain-top scene is another thriller and I expected it to be the climax but they had a few more tricks up their sleeves.

The actual climax is superb and a fitting end to a bubble-gum movie that still has you on the edge of your seat for most of it. I only wish now I'd seen it on the big screen. 

I'd been looking forward to seeing this since I first heard about it. The awesome Brad Bird doing a movie about food, I was guaranteed to love it.

I went with three children aged 8, 6 and 4 and we stocked up on the usual popcorn and sprite. The animated short at the start was ok but not up to the usual standard of Pixar.

I think it started badly for me when I realised we had a narrator. This device can ruin a movie and I think it interferes badly here. Add to this that the rats had American accents but the humans had French ones and you get the sense that some unfortunate compromises were made.

The plot is utterly straightforward, misunderstood rat Remy loves food and cooking and Chef Gusteau on the TV. Old lady on farm where they live wakes up to find him in living room, catastrophe ensues and the entire rat colony escapes and Remy ends up lost. He eventually discovers (with the help of ghost/imaginary now-deceased Chef Gusteau) that he has ended up in Paris and is actually outside Gusteau's restaurant.

He sneaks in to find nasty evil replacement chef and new clueless garbage boy. After soup disaster, he fixes it for garbage boy and through some usual plot devices they end up friends. Chef thinks garbage boy made amazing soup and asks for it again. Remy and boy (Linguini) figure out a way to work together where Remy sits under his hat and controls him like a puppet by pulling his hair.

Lots of japes and excitement. Sub-plot involving Linguini's real identity. Nasty restaurant critic Anton Ego straight out of a Tim Burton movie. Romance, arrogance, failure, recovery.

Half way through the younger kids started getting restless and the 6 year old said "I thought this was supposed to be a funny movie. No one is laughing".

There are a bunch of problems with the movie. It's clearly made for adults and not kids but has the silly sentimentality that seems to be compulsory in kids animated movies rather than anything more sophisticated. It really doesn't satisfy anyone and falls between two stools.

The animation is wonderful but that's not why I enjoy movies. There is nothing to care about in it. Nothing of the emotional quality of Toy Story or The Incredibles. It reminds me most of Monsters Inc which I think of as Pixar's worst movie. Lots of activity but no real heart. 

The only great moment is when the critic eats the ratatouille. That's what I was looking for all the way through. But 30 perfect seconds in a run of the mill humdrum story is not enough.

Let's hope Brad Bird recovers with the next one as he is a man of incredible (pun intended) ability.