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RETIRED FRENCH PTERODACTYLS FOR SCHMUCKS
I’ve been to the cinemas, yo. And I've been on airplanes.
Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec)
I’m off and on with Luc Besson as a writer/director. He gave us La Femme Nikita, Leon, The Fifth Element and (yes) The Transporter, but he also gave us The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and Arthur And The Invisibles. Still, I was looking forward to his new film, an adaptation of the Fraco-Belgian comic book Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec.
Set in 1910, the story involves novelist turned journalist Adele hoping to cure her incapacitated sister by “borrowing” the ancient mummy of Ramses II’s personal doctor and bringing him to life with the help of a scientist who can ressurect the dead with his mind – only he is arrested for reviving a pterodactyl in a nearby musuem for practice.
It’s even weirder than it sounds, and it’s the sort of good, weird fun you’d expect from a decent Besson film, filled with oddball characters and sly satire both on govt bureaucrats and the Indiana Jones-style adventure genre from which it borrows somewhat. It’s also a little clunky at times, and the main character Adele is a little underbaked, but Louise Bourgoin gives her a charmingly plucky, determined edge.
Anyway, it’s probably not for everyone, but even if all you know of Besson’s work is The Fifth Element and Leon, I’d recommend this. And since the ending is essentially begging for a sequel, there may be more to come.
Red
As in the film loosely based on the Wildstorm comic-book mini-series by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner (which I have read, yes). And the first thing to get out of the way is that it’s not really anything like the comic book, but Ellis is okay with that, so we’ll set that aside.
Regardless of its pedigree, Red is basically a CIA action comedy that gets by mainly on the strength of its cast – namely Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren as four retired CIA agents dragged back into action in self-defense. All of them are great fun to watch, and it’s worth it just to see an action film where the youngest main character is over 55. (And yes, there’s Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle.)
On the downside, the film suffers from the usual illogical OTT action-overload that looks great but is completely non-sensical (i.e. surely if the CIA wants to kill people, they can do it in more subtle ways than fully-automatic weapons and RPG launchers in broad daylight). That said, the film never takes itself that seriously anyway. Not great, but fun for what it is.
Dinner For Schmucks
I will watch the damnedest things on 15-hour UA flights when I’m bored to tears – to include this screwball comedy (based on the French film Le Dîner de cons) about yuppie Tim whose ticket to impressing his boss is attending a “Dinner For Idiots” – in which attendees have to bring an idiot as a guest (who doesn’t know they’re there to be laughed at). Whoever brings the biggest idiot wins a trophy. Only in this case, “idiot” seems to mean “strange people with odd hobbies”.
Paul Rudd is Tim, whose fiancee doesn’t want him to attend the dinner, and Steve Carrell is the “idiot”, an IRS employee who makes elaborate dioramas with taxidermied mice. It’s actually funnier than I thought it would be, thanks to Carrell’s game performance and a script that opts for the kind of zany oddball humor that appeals to me. The chief downside is that both the dinner and the romance angles are 100% predictable from start to finish.
So, all up, a collection of decent jokes, but not much else to recommend unless you like Carrell. (Or perhaps Jemaine Clement, one half of Flight Of The Conchords, who is great as pretentious artist Kieran Vollard.)
Don’t be a penguin,
This is dF
Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec)
I’m off and on with Luc Besson as a writer/director. He gave us La Femme Nikita, Leon, The Fifth Element and (yes) The Transporter, but he also gave us The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and Arthur And The Invisibles. Still, I was looking forward to his new film, an adaptation of the Fraco-Belgian comic book Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec.
Set in 1910, the story involves novelist turned journalist Adele hoping to cure her incapacitated sister by “borrowing” the ancient mummy of Ramses II’s personal doctor and bringing him to life with the help of a scientist who can ressurect the dead with his mind – only he is arrested for reviving a pterodactyl in a nearby musuem for practice.
It’s even weirder than it sounds, and it’s the sort of good, weird fun you’d expect from a decent Besson film, filled with oddball characters and sly satire both on govt bureaucrats and the Indiana Jones-style adventure genre from which it borrows somewhat. It’s also a little clunky at times, and the main character Adele is a little underbaked, but Louise Bourgoin gives her a charmingly plucky, determined edge.
Anyway, it’s probably not for everyone, but even if all you know of Besson’s work is The Fifth Element and Leon, I’d recommend this. And since the ending is essentially begging for a sequel, there may be more to come.
Red
As in the film loosely based on the Wildstorm comic-book mini-series by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner (which I have read, yes). And the first thing to get out of the way is that it’s not really anything like the comic book, but Ellis is okay with that, so we’ll set that aside.
Regardless of its pedigree, Red is basically a CIA action comedy that gets by mainly on the strength of its cast – namely Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren as four retired CIA agents dragged back into action in self-defense. All of them are great fun to watch, and it’s worth it just to see an action film where the youngest main character is over 55. (And yes, there’s Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle.)
On the downside, the film suffers from the usual illogical OTT action-overload that looks great but is completely non-sensical (i.e. surely if the CIA wants to kill people, they can do it in more subtle ways than fully-automatic weapons and RPG launchers in broad daylight). That said, the film never takes itself that seriously anyway. Not great, but fun for what it is.
Dinner For Schmucks
I will watch the damnedest things on 15-hour UA flights when I’m bored to tears – to include this screwball comedy (based on the French film Le Dîner de cons) about yuppie Tim whose ticket to impressing his boss is attending a “Dinner For Idiots” – in which attendees have to bring an idiot as a guest (who doesn’t know they’re there to be laughed at). Whoever brings the biggest idiot wins a trophy. Only in this case, “idiot” seems to mean “strange people with odd hobbies”.
Paul Rudd is Tim, whose fiancee doesn’t want him to attend the dinner, and Steve Carrell is the “idiot”, an IRS employee who makes elaborate dioramas with taxidermied mice. It’s actually funnier than I thought it would be, thanks to Carrell’s game performance and a script that opts for the kind of zany oddball humor that appeals to me. The chief downside is that both the dinner and the romance angles are 100% predictable from start to finish.
So, all up, a collection of decent jokes, but not much else to recommend unless you like Carrell. (Or perhaps Jemaine Clement, one half of Flight Of The Conchords, who is great as pretentious artist Kieran Vollard.)
Don’t be a penguin,
This is dF