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michael winterbottom

Jul 16 2013
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The World's End poster

Review: The World’s End, Pacific Rim, The Look of Love + School Holiday Roundup

By Cinema and Reviews

Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Simon Pegg, Paddie Considine and Martn Freeman in The world's End

I can ima­gine some people not enjoy­ing The World’s End. People who don’t care about – or even notice – cine­mat­ic crafts­man­ship, people who think that being self-referential means being self-indulgent, audi­ences who prefer their action sequences to be cos­mic in scale and meas­ured in mega­bytes per second rather than laughs per minute – I expect those people might feel that the latest mas­ter­piece by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost goes sail­ing over their heads. After all, a film like The World’s End rewards con­cen­tra­tion (and second and third view­ings) where­as most block­busters rely on increas­ingly destruct­ive spec­tacle for audi­ences to get their kicks.

The World's End posterThat’s not to say that this film is light on apo­ca­lypse – it prom­ises the end of the world after all – but its core remains the deep friend­ships between men of a cer­tain age and how those friend­ships grow when tested – the same theme that infused their pre­vi­ous two films togeth­er, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

[pullquote]Pacific Rim shows how lov­ing bad films some­times means you make bad films.[/pullquote]Pegg plays Gary King, middle-aged lost soul, pin­ing for the glory days of High School and des­per­ate to com­plete his mas­ter­piece – the 12 pub crawl through Newton Haven known as “The Golden Mile”. He and his mates failed back in 1993 and he’s round­ing them up for one last crack at it. His four old mates (played by Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and the won­der­ful Eddie Marsan) are reluct­ant to leave their tidy grown-up lives behind but, per­suaded, they get to their old stomp­ing grounds only to find they are human­ity’s only hope to avoid inter-galactic colonisation.

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Sep 06 2012
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Telluride Diary part six: The show (part three)

By Cinema and Travel

Firstly, I should add a vital – totally Telluride – detail to yes­ter­day’s post. By choos­ing to watch Rust & Bone and the Marion Cotillard Tribute I missed the first indoor screen­ing of Hyde Park on Hudson and there­fore a rare live appear­ance by Bill Murray at the Q&A. Regret is an emo­tion reserved for those who only look back­wards but – damn!

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Legend Leonard Maltin wait­ing to gain entry to At Any Cost.

Back to the show. Sunday was always likely to be a very full day and – with my new found con­fid­ence in the “sys­tem” I was determ­ined to take full advant­age. I once begged the New Zealand Film Festival to let me watch a screen­er of Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart, even though they had chosen not to pro­gramme it because I loved the idea so much and because Roger Ebert has been cham­pi­on­ing the tal­en­ted young dir­ect­or for years. In fact, they have only screened one of his three films to date: Goodbye Solo in 2009.

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Oct 27 2011
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Review: The Trip, Pina and Paranormal Activity 3

By Cinema and Reviews

Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip is the best pic­ture about middle-aged male angst since Sideways, and it’s pos­sibly even bet­ter than that fine film. Two priv­ileged English celebrit­ies spend a week driv­ing around the North of England from one fine res­taur­ant to anoth­er, eat­ing and drink­ing them­selves silly on someone else’s dime. And yet, some­thing dark­er is up.

Self-absorbed “Steve Coogan” (Steve Coogan) is sep­ar­ated from his girl­friend, dis­tanced from his chil­dren, des­per­ate for recog­ni­tion as a ser­i­ous act­or but all too often wel­comed by strangers with a warm-hearted but annoy­ing repe­ti­tion of his great TV catch­phrase (Alan Partridge’s “Ah-ha”). On the sur­face, “Rob Brydon” (Rob Brydon) is a hap­pily mar­ried man with a young child, a mod­er­ately suc­cess­ful TV and stand-up career but, as Coogan points out in a pathos-ridden trip the ruined Bolton Abbey, there’s some­thing about Brydon’s nev­erend­ing celebrity impres­sions and forced bon­homie that sug­gests he hasn’t quite got to grips with the real world.

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Nov 11 2010
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Review: The Killer Inside Me, After the Waterfall, Jackass 3D and City Island

By Cinema and Reviews

The Killer Inside Me posterMichael Winterbottom some­how man­ages to make a film a year and, while the qual­ity can go up and down a bit, his work is nev­er less than interesting.

He’s most fam­ous for Tristram Shandy (with Steve Coogan) and the sexu­ally expli­cit 9 Songs, but my favour­ites are his Klondike ver­sion of The Mayor of Casterbridge (The Claim) and the people-trafficking pseudo-verité of In This World. Already this year we’ve seen his 2008 mis­fire Genova (Colin Firth, moody and bereaved) and right now we have The Killer Inside Me, a mis­an­throp­ic Texas noir based on a fam­ous pulp nov­el by Jim Thompson.

Babyfaced Casey Affleck (the cow­ardly assas­sin who killed Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) plays anoth­er Ford, Central City Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford, son of the town’s respec­ted GP and pil­lar of West Texas society.

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Aug 18 2010
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Review: Daybreakers, Hot Tub Time Machine, Genova and The Necessities of Life

By Cinema and Reviews

I am sick of vam­pires. Sick to death. As a great philo­soph­er once said, “What is point, vam­pires?” and I have to con­cur. They’re every­where you seem to turn thses days and the most bor­ing of the lot (the Twilight mob) are back in June to bore us all to death once again.

Daybreakers posterSo, my heart sank a little when I saw the trail­ers for Daybreakers, an Aussie hor­ror about a world con­trolled by vam­pires, hunt­ing and farm­ing the remain­ing humans for their plasma. One of the pleas­ures of this gig is when the sur­prises are pleas­ant and Daybreakers def­in­itely turned into one of those. Tightly wound and (for the most part) logic­ally sound, the tyres have been well and truly kicked on the premise before the cam­er­as (and digit­al com­pos­it­ors and Weta mask makers) got involved.

Ethan Hawke plays the Chief Blood Scientist for the big cor­por­a­tion that provides most of the world’s sup­ply. Ten years earli­er, an infec­ted bat caused an epi­dem­ic which rendered most of the pop­u­la­tion undead – a few, like CEO Sam Neill went will­ingly when faced with the offer of immor­tal­ity. Hawke is work­ing on a sub­sti­tute – he’s veget­ari­an in a human blood kind of way – and sup­plies for every­one are run­ning low. When a reneg­ade bunch of humans (led by Willem Dafoe) tell him about a pos­sible cure he is forced to choose between his boss, his human-hunter broth­er and what’s left of his humanity.

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