Reviews

This must be one of the worst films to come out of 2005.

It's a bog standard superhero flick, but with characters that are impossible to really feel for or even care about, action that peters out fairly quickly, and a plot that you've seen a thousand times before. It seems pretty obvious that the Studio was convinced that all you really need to make a superhero flick is wafer thin characters a lot of garish colours.

What I find incredible is that the Studio had hundreds of ppl looking at this film as they made it, and nobody seems to have realized that it was rubbish. And it isn't as if there weren't some decent superhero films to cop ideas off. Spiderman, for example, was a much better film.

Even if you have nothing better to watch, don't bother with this film. Paint the kitchen, go for a walk. Telephone your grandmother, maybe. You'll be doing yourself a favour.

This story is about the romantic triangle between a nth. African male prostitute, a French transsexual prostitute (Stephanie) and a Russian waiter who speaks no French and never seems to shave.

As a film it is dull, dreary and depressing, shot either on foggy, overcast winter days or in badly lit interiors, where everyone is bathed in a weird blue luminescence. And yes, I know, it's because the white balance was out. Everyone is pale and downcast and looks haggard, shabby and dirty. Bodies are bony and shot in such closeup that they look quite ugly and unappealing. Moles, greasy hair. Yuk. Bad news in a film where people spend a lot of time either naked or having sex.

And the story? Well, Stephanie's mother is dying. All three characters go back to Stephanie's home village where, through a bunch of flashbacks to desolate countryside and predictably dingy interiors, we see a bit of Stephanie's childhood as a boy called Pierre. The mother dies. Well... and that's about it, really. Character development is kept to a minimum, as is the denouement of the story.

I suppose the storyline is not linear (it would explain a lot of non sequiteurs) but really, after paying my seven euros I don't feel like having to construct the film myself: that's what the director takes my money for. To expect me to join the story telling process and get my hands dirty, so to speak, is asking way too much.

This film is a heap of pretentious rubbish made, above all, from a desire to epater les bourgeois (ie shock the straights). I can see how it was a shoo-in for the Berlin Film Festival, and I can see why it got nowhere.

Awwwwww... so this film doesn't have people in togas. Oh, well. Sorry to shock the purists, but neither did the original Shakespeare representations. Stop nitpicking and let's get on with things.

What's this film about?

It's about Titus Andronicus, successful and revered Roman general who returning to Rome in triumph offers the son of the conquered queen of the Goths as sacrifice. That's tradition and he HAS to do it to appease the gods into letting his own sons into heaven. Not unreasonably, the queen of the Goths bears a grudge over this.

On the death of the reigning Emperor, Titus Andronicus is hailed as Emperor but he is not interested in politics. He is a simple general. So he asks that the leader of one of Rome's warring factions be appointed emperor in his stead. Bad call! To say that things go downhill from there on is a bit of an understatement.

The tragedy lies in the fact that Titus Andronicus expected everyone to be as honest and decent as himself and fails to see that Rome is a proper snake pit.

This film is dark, gory and rather gruesome. On the other hand, one really feels for the characters and their predicament so the violence and gore are most definitely NOT gratuitous.

The production:

It's stunning.

If you liked Romeo and Juliet, you'll probably like this. The sets are rather art-deco, with lots of references to Italy's fascist era (the senators for example, wear those white three piece suits with high collars associated with Mussolini) there are vespas and video arcades and newspapers and swords and horse drawn chariots all in the same film. This can be slightly jarring, but it does give the story a sort of timelessness which stops the viewer from dumping the film into the "period piece" bin or thinking "how clever".

The language:

Well, it's Shakespearean English (otherwise it wouldn't be Titus Andronicus, would it?) Some bits are harder to understand than others but because the action is matched to the word you get used to it very quickly. It certainly shouldn't put you off.

it's pretty good, really. The only thing I didn't like is that Alan Cumming (who becomes emperor in Titus Andronicus' place) looks far too evil right from from the start. You can't help but wonder how Titus could have picked HIM to be emperor, he looks like trouble from the very beginning.

All in all a fantastic movie but because of the gore and general darkness I'm not sure I'd watch it THAT often :o)

This is quite a simple documentary on what people do for entertainment across the Americas (north and south).

Lots of bar hopping and girls dancing in fish-tanks in the US (wow! the sophistication of it all!), local parties, limbo dancers, nightclubs and so on in the rest of the continent. A few minutes are devoted to each country (the lion's share going to the US) and the film travels South and follows the night.

I suppose that entertainment-wise, things have changed a LOT in the past 32 years but this film manages to be entertaining and zips along at a pretty good pace. It's obviously quite dated but still cute even if you only watch it as some sort of anthropological document.

Confused murder suspect cannot remember if she murdered her rich husband.

Against the better judgment of hard-bitten "throw the book at her and save tax-payers' money" type police department, smooth psychologist/hypnotist (Nigel Hawthorne) helps her to relive the night of the murder by means of regression into her past.

However, as she relives life with her husband she begins to notice that lots of details don't quite match her memories. What really happened?

This is NOT a fantastic film, I wouldn't pay money to see it in a cinema, for example. The depiction of hypnosis is bizarre enough to initially seem quite funny.

Once you get over that rather shaky plot device though, the various layers of reality brought up by the hypnosis are quite interesting in a "what is reality?" way. It reminded me the teensiest little bit of "Memento" and even though it was late at night I ignored the film's more pretentious angles and sat through the entire thing. Mainly to see why the memory discrepancies occurred and so on.

The lighting and photography are also quite nice.

This is a collection of circus acts with a fair bit of Tati's miming thrown in for good measure.

It's not a BAD film. Some memorable sequences include Tati miming a tennis game (in slow motion!) and a collection of traffic cops around the world. I don't think the M. Hulot character really let Tati really stretch out and MIME. He is a fantastic performer and certainly as good as Marcel Marceau.

The other performers and comedians, while not as famous as Tati, are still pretty good and cannot be said to let the film down at all.

The main problem is that the premise is so basic. You can't really GO very far with this and Tati doesn't. It's basically just like watching a circus on TV. There's nothing to really glue the whole picture together.

I agree with the reviewer that found the audiences 70's clothing interesting in itself.

This is a collection of circus acts with a fair bit of Tati's miming thrown in for good measure.

It's not a BAD film. Some memorable sequences include Tati miming a tennis game (in slow motion!) and traffic cops around the world. I don't think the M. Hulot character let Tati really stretch out and MIME. He is very very good.

The other performers and comedians, while not as famous as Tati, are still pretty good.

The main problem is that the premise is so basic. You can't really GO very far with this and Tati doesn't. It's basically just like watching a circus on TV. There's nothing to really glue the whole picture together.

I agree with the reviewer that found the audiences 70's clothing interesting in itself.

I guess my main problem with this film is that I'm not 11 years old.

If I was 11, then I PROBABLY wouldn't notice how dreadful the script is (though even at that tender age I'd have my suspicions). I probably might not realize how little this film has to do with computers (though in this computer-literate day and age that is rather unlikely), and I'd be too young to have seen each and every situation and character depicted in this film in about 3,404,983 previous films.

The film DOES have some saving graces. The depiction of viruses is so ridiculous that it's funny, and the image of the inside of a mainframe as something resembling the NYC skyline at night is trippy, although it's just too bizarre for words. I also enjoy the villains having a good squirm at the thought of being forever associated with this dreadful little film.

It's also inspiring to see that actors CAN rise over these "strictly-from-hunger" exercises and finally wind up in decent movies. per asper ad astra, and all that.

If you DO hire this film, do something for intelligence and culture. Make a mobile out of the tape, you'll be doing something for humanity.

This is a pretty bog-standard tale, and you've almost certainly seen it done before. Two men who fall in love with the same woman during wartime. Claude Rains plays the stodgy but noble-minded husband while Cary Grant is the suave outsider. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

What is absolutely WONDERFUL about this movie is that the studio tried to save money by recycling scenes from an earlier, silent version of the same (?) film. On paper it made a sort of sense, the earlier film had enjoyed a bigger budget with lots of extras and so on. Unfortunately no-one took into account the film stock and frames per second differences between the two films.

So there you are, watching what seems like a low-budget pot boiler. Suddenly you're thrust into a blurry, gritty shot of hundreds of natives moving VERY quickly and jerkily for a couple of seconds. And then we're back to normal tempos and film stock.

OK, it's not much to write home about but it's quite a fun effect.

When people speak about BAD cinema, they forget one very important fact: no-one remembers the very worst film they ever saw. If a film is bad enough, you don't bother watching it. You merely change channels or fall asleep, walk out of the theatre or whatever. Truly bad movies are so mediocre that they don't even register on our consciousness.

Seen in this very specific light, Boardinghouse is a pretty good film, really. It's certainly quite memorable and does a pretty good job of grabbing one's attention, which is more than one can say for a good 50% of movies.

I find it hard to explain why I actually LIKE "boardinghouse" When I caught it on TV the other night I thought I was watching some South American soapie. The plot is basic slasher stuff (guy peoples boarding house with scantily clad girls while serial killer type lurks in the shadows), the acting is pretty much a non event and the special effects (such as they are) are easily outdone by even the cheapest of modern day digicams.

On the positive side, some of the girls aren't bad looking, everyone has these wonderful, late 70s clothes (huge collars, big fluffy hairdos on the men, flares, etc. etc) and the film is fast and gory enough to guarantee that there is never a dull moment. The film was shot straight to video and the very cheapness of the production adds a rough, nasty dimension to the film which would otherwise not be there.

Boardinghouse is nowhere NEAR being a fantastic movie, but if you have a sense of humour and are not too pedantic it can be a fun and memorable experience. I would certainly watch it again.

It's HARD for a film to live up to its studios own hype, so lets give this film a couple of extra points.

And it needs every point it can get. The scripting is lackluster and VERY episodic, the camerawork is rather pedestrian, the special effects are pretty humdrum and the music is dull and ponderous.

The scripting is a rather dull, plodding affair, really. The film IS very faithful to the book, but it's also full of unnecessary detail and one tends to wonder how long the film is going to go on for. Do we really need a scene where the layout of the Hogwarts dormitories is explained? Do we really NEED to be introduced to the School ghosts when they play no part in the subsequent story? What's the point of wasting time on Norbert the dragon when he doesn't really play any part in the story? When halfway through the film they begin talking about the philosopher's stone, I found myself thinking "THAT'S right... THAT's what this film is about" but by then I'd lost interest in the whole mess. Worst of all, the film lacks the atmosphere of the book. The book has a real sense of menace throughout and every piece fits in well. This film drags on for the first three quarters and then, finding itself in more familiar Hollywood territory rushes through the last bits.

The camerawork is pretty pedestrian, the film feels SMALL and there is little attempt at introducing a real sense of grandeur in the visuals. The special effects were a bit disappointing, but then again it's HARD to know what a game of Quidditch would really look like. I didn't like the centaurs or the troll at all, they look plastickey and somewhat stilted. Finally, the music belongs in some 1940s Errol Flynn movie. Still, it's nice to see a film with an ACTUAL SCORE rather than a bunch of pop songs thrown together.

Having said ALL that, this film is WAY above the usual kiddie film: it's better than most Walt Disney product, for example, and it's interesting to note that one CAN actually discuss this film in "grownup terms". Actually, this film comes out a lot better and with a lot more depth than (say) your usual James Bond film. The story line is more intricate and the characters are richer.

Overall, the acting is not bad, although of course it'd be surprising if such an illustrious cast of British actors couldn't play these roles while standing on their heads.

Anyway, 'nuff said.