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sophie okenedo

Dec 27 2010
Love0

Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Collector, Skin & I, Don Giovanni

By Cinema, Reviews

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World posterYour cor­res­pond­ent is a big fan of young English dir­ect­or Edgar Wright. His first two fea­tures, in col­lab­or­a­tion with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, were the redoubt­ably enter­tain­ing Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. There’s a won­der­ful per­cuss­ive energy to Wright’s film­mak­ing which brooks no bore­dom. So, I was look­ing for­ward to his latest film, the heav­ily pro­moted com­ic book adapt­a­tion Scott Pilgrim vs. the World which opened world­wide this week. And I really wanted to like it. No, strike that. I did like it. I just didn’t love it the way the film so des­per­ately wants to be loved.

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera from Juno) is a young Toronto slack­er who plays bass in a ter­rible band and has just begun dat­ing a high school girl. If he seems without much in the way of ambi­tion that may be because he is still griev­ing after being dumped a year ago, or it may be that he simply lacks ambition.

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Mar 14 2009
Love0

Review: Watchmen, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, The Secret Life of Bees, Gonzo- The Life & Work of Hunter S. Thompson, Crazy Love and The Wackness

By Cinema, Reviews

Watchmen posterIt’s all about the adapt­a­tions this week and con­tender num­ber one is a film that deserves all the atten­tion it has been receiv­ing, even though it falls well short of its esteemed source mater­i­al. Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is based on the greatest graph­ic nov­el of all time, Moore and Gibbons 1986 pre-apocalyptic mas­ter­piece which is one of the darkest por­traits of the mod­ern human con­di­tion ever rendered in the bold, flat col­ours of a com­ic book.

In a par­al­lel USA in which cos­tumed vigil­antes are real but out­lawed, the spectre of nuc­le­ar anni­hil­a­tion looms over a sup­posedly free soci­ety that is com­ing apart at the seams. One by one, some­body is dis­pos­ing of the retired her­oes and only masked sociopath Rorschach (who nev­er turned in his mask, revealed his iden­tity or stopped beat­ing up bad guys) deems it worthy of investigation.

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Feb 06 2006
Love0
Dirty Pretty Things poster

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

By Cinema, Reviews

Dirty Pretty Things posterIn the far-fetched, but involving, thrill­er Dirty Pretty Things Chiwetel Ejiofer stands out as Okwe, a Nigerian illeg­al immig­rant liv­ing below the state radar in London. Haunted by a past tragedy he drives a minicab by day and takes the front desk of a small hotel for the night shift. When he’s not at one of his jobs he crashes on the couch of Senay (Audrey Tautou), a Turkish refugee who is also work­ing illeg­ally at the hotel.

When Okwe dis­cov­ers a human heart block­ing the toi­let of Room 510, he finds him­self unwill­ingly involved in anoth­er of aspect London’s seamy under­side, the traffic in human organs. Meanwhile the immig­ra­tion author­it­ies close in on Senay who finds her own options run­ning out.

Stephen Frears dir­ects with a work­man­like, BBC, non-style which is prob­ably not helped by watch­ing it on a TV. Ejiofer has great pres­ence and is the real soul of the film but, apart from Tatou, the rest of the United Nations cast aren’t able to elev­ate their char­ac­ters above cliché. Villain Sneaky, in par­tic­u­lar, seems to be played all on one note by Spanish act­or Sergi López in a rare English lan­guage per­form­ance. Academy Award nom­in­ee Sophie Okenedo (Hotel Rwanda) is fine as the pro­ver­bi­al whore with a heart of gold but isn’t giv­en much help by the script.

Directed by Stephen Frears. 94 minutes.
Screening con­di­tions: At home on DVD, via DVD Unlimited. Sound and pic­ture fine.

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