Toy Story 3

I saw this on the plane back from Dubai. On the way to Dubai, I saw The Shawshank Redemption and Casablanca, but I'd seen both of those beforehand. Toy Story 3 was new.

I saw the original when I was young and have not seen the second one. It's amazing how the basic story had stuck in my head. This shows that what an effective film it was. It was nice to pretend that your toys had personalities, sensitivities, goals, etc.

This pulls at the heartstrings by showing the toys' being neglected. Andy must decide what to do with them, now that he's going to university. He decides to put them in the attic, but his mum accidentally throws them out. They escape and end up in a daycare centre, where the toys are ruled by a dictator named Lotso. He is the only entirely bad character in the film. There are others who work for him at times, but see the errors of their ways eventually.

It's fast-paced and has a number of twists. There are a few times when it seems as if the toys are either sentenced to a life of misery or to destruction, but it all ends well. I noticed one or two references for adults and/or film buffs to notice. The part when Big Baby throws Lotso in the bin is reminiscent of when Darf Vader throws the Emperor off the bridge. Barbie is given an intelligent line.

Judged by an IMDB discussion, a lot of adults cried towards the end of this film: perhaps more adults cried than children. That is probably a result of the film's message that things we once loved get forgotten about and neglected. Everything changes in this world and loyalty must be rationed. Time goes by and we don't have enough time in our lives to keep hold of everything we've ever loved.

This gets 9/10 from me. It's not often that a kids' film can keep adults entertained as well. It is a well-crafted film that makes you pay attention and care about the outcome.

Saw 3D

This is an interesting use of 3D. It's mostly used to shoot body organs in your direction and to give dimension to women's breasts.

It does what you expect. Inventive torture and death scenes. Many of the victims are bad people themselves, and you sometimes feel as if justice is being done (and overdone). This is the end of the series, and it has a good ending at the end. I don't think many will see its coming.

Not much more to say. It's not much use giving a rating to a film like this. You either like gore or you don't. I like it.

The Social Network

A film about Facebook. It surprised me by how good it was. I didn't know any of this stuff about Facebook except for one detail at the start, when Mark Zuckerberg creates a website that compares college girls on the basis of looks.

The main triumph of this is Jesse Eisenberg's ability to play a bad geek. I've seen him play nice geeks before, but that is a cliched role. The Mark Zuckerberg who coded Facebook is portrayed as ruthless, lonesome, ambitious and extremely intelligent. He makes Facebook into a rapid success by making all the right moves, including a partnership with Sean Parker. There is a lot of humour directed at Harvard and its mythical societies. One scene involves some young Harvard scholars answering questions about Harvard's secrets in the freezing cold.

You get an insight into how powerful computer programmers/scientists are in this IT-focussed economy and into the status-obsessed social life of top universities. It's good to learn something from a film. It's succeeded when you feel as if you're in the environment that's being depicted. The Social Network wins on this front.

I'll give this yet another 8/10. I know that I've given a lot of 8s, but that's just the way it is. It gets marked down because I feel that parts of it were too harsh on Zuckerberg. (Also Sean Parker is portrayed as having paedophilic tendencies. I've no idea if this is true. When I searched Google, I could only find scruffy websites and videos promoting this.) Eduardo is portrayed as a nice guy whose good nature was exploited by Zuckerberg. He was involved in the film's making, which makes me suspicious that they biased it towards him. The Winklevoss brothers and their friend Divya are stereotyped as privileged and being used to getting their own way, but are also gentlemen and are likeable characters overall. The film ends with Zuckerberg's hoping that his ex-girlfriend will accept his offer of Facebook friendship, which suggests that he is unhappy with life. The film focusses on Zuckerberg a bit too much. To have got a 9 or a 10, the other characters needed to be developed more.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

The first thing to say is that the original Wall Street is a 9/10. I knock a mark off only because Daryl Hannah was so poor in it. It's funny that Michael Douglas won an Academy Award for Wall Street and Daryl Hannah won a Razzie.

This sequel gets 7/10: it's good but not as good as the original. There is a decent plotline with a lot going on. You see a human side of Gordon Gecko at times, but he's still a manipulative man. There are references to the economic crisis and the bailing-out of the banks. The film begins in a similar way to the origin - by demonstrating how brutal and bitchy the world of stockbroking can be. I was amused by the brief appearances by Bud Fox and the estate agent from the original, and the use of the original theme at the end. However, it's a very different film overall and I'm glad of that. Jake Moore is more established in his career than Bud Fox was, and there's no "good guy" equivalent of the trade-unionist father. It's clever how the informal conversatons between Jake and Gordon are actually trades - favours for favours - as made explicit by Gordon about half-way through.

I say that it's not as good as the original because it doesn't have the catchy one-liners and does not have the same satisfying climax. Oddly enough, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps has a happy ending in which everyone gets what they want. I've read on Metacritic that several critics consider the plot too complicated. I thought it was less complicated than the original. When I saw Wall Street first, I didn't understand how Bud Fox had managed to pull one over on Gordon Gecko. I didn't even know what "insider trading" meant before I'd seen it, although it's easy enough to work out. There are one or two threads in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps that might be cut to save time: the thread with Jake's reckless mother was probably put in so that we understand Jake's background, but I think there could've been better and briefer ways of doing this.

I'm glad they made it as I always wanted to know what happened to Bud Fox and Gordon Gecko at their trials. Now I know!

Blazing Saddles

It's strange what you can find lying around your house. I was told that it was an early spoof film recently and vowed to watch it, without realising that one of my brothers owned it.

I've watched this having already seen the Scary Movie films, the Naked Guns films, Family Guy, American Dad, etc. Shouldn't it seem very tame in comparison to those? I think it stands up well. Also it was interesting to see how laughing at small-minded racism has been around since 1974. The "meta humour" whereby the film jokes at itself and the actors break character must've been a first of its sort. There is a good Hitler joke towards the end.

The film is not as fast-paced as modern spoofs are, and I don't think is a bad thing. It has a chilled-out feel and you don't need to be paying attention to get every joke that's cracked as you do in some 30 Rock episodes. It references a few other films but not that many (IMDB shows that it has in turn been referenced a lot). Some spoof films jump around too much with the references so that you can't build up any sense of the characters. The Scary Movie films fall into the category in which the characters are just means of referencing other films; Blazing Saddles has memorable, funny characters in it.

I'll give this 8/10. It makes you laugh, which is mission accomplished. It broke new ground. It's still worth watching 36 years later.

The Killer Inside Me

This was very controversial when it came out owing to a scene where a woman is beaten to a pulp. It was a difficult scene for me to watch, and I winced as I watched the punches land right in her face one after another. I had thought that the opening scene with Lou's beating Joyce with a belt on the arse was the scene, but it turned out that worse was to come.

The start of the film is brilliant. You hear Lou's charming narrative about the importance of manners in Texas just before his actions in Joyce's house reveal that he is not a clean cop. The alternation between his quiet life as a copper in a town with no crime and a sadist who burns cigarettes onto beggers keeps you interested. The other police officers are not entirely honest either, but they don't kill anyone. You have to pay close attention to understand Lou's motives for killing Mike and trying to kill Joyce. This was originally a novel and a lot of information is squashed into the first half-hour. The pace slows right down after Lou kills Mike, and the rest of the film is dedicated to suspense as you wonder whether Lou will get caught or not. He is cold and calculating as he covers for himself. When he realises that the game is up, he makes sure that he takes everyone down with him. Lou is a scarey character: he shows little remorse for his killings and is able to stay one step ahead of the game. He may not win in the end, but he doesn't lose either.

The film is very uneven. As a Guardian journalist pointed out, it is odd how they show Joyce's beating in zoomed-in detail but then Johnnie Papas hangs himself off camera. I got bored in places and engrossed in others. It gets 6/10 from me. It lacks an emotional dimension to the main character. You see his strategy in protecting himself as if he's playing a game of chess, but he has none of the charisma that other great cinema villains have.

Cherry Tree Lane

The phrase "Home Invasion" has entered the British lexicon. By the time I'm old, we'll all be talking like George Bush. This film is a home-invasion flick for the British hoodie generation. It must've had one of the shortest cinema runs ever. I saw it listed at the cinemas in TimeOut London on 7th Sept (interview day), looked for it at the cinemas, didn't see it anywhere, then saw it on DVD in Blockbuster one day.

This film has good acting and a basic plot. The cast is largely unknown. Tom Kane, who plays a role akin to Krug in The Last House on the Left, is a convincing gang-leader-cum-psychopath. The other kids are less temperamental but look up to him. The opening scene shows a British middle-class couple cutting each other at dinner with snide comments. This is different from the usual strategy of making the victims as likeable as possible. You might even laugh a bit when this irritating couple get bound and gagged at first. However, any Schadenfreude should be gone by the time that the mother is raped (off-screen).

It's a short film and it could've been even shorter. The decision to introduce some younger kids was a poor one. They come in too late in the film and I find it hard to believe that kids that young would not be scared by this, even if we are in inner-city London. The very ending is the best part when the father gets his terrible revenge. We see his inner beast come out in much the same way that the nice doctor in The Last House on the Left becomes a murderer. There is a nice touch when he rings the police and gets an unhelpful response (a lot of people can relate).

I give this 5/10. It's not bad for a short film and gives you a kick of violence but it's nothing revolutionary. Ashley Chin may have a decent career ahead of him.