jeremygarlick Reviews

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy (2012–2014)

Ooh, yeah.

[9/10 · 3 September 2014]

A big surprise, Luxury Comedy hits you in the face like a fantasy pancake thrown by a big blue blob and sticks there, dripping.

What a riot of invention, surrealism and humor. Occasionally erratic and incomprehensible, but that's all part of the fun. Anyway, you can watch it again and again if you don't get it first time.

Nothing could be more innovative and fresh than this cornucopia of strangeness. Kaleidoscopic and multicoloured, not for those of a conventional disposition. Only lovers of the truly weird need apply for this feast of freshness.

"We're off to see the Jelly Fox, the Jelly Fox, the Jelly Fox. He gives you what you need."

Modern Times (1936)

Vastly overrated

[3/10 · 16 March 2013]

It is very difficult to believe the amount of pretentious waffle that has been written about this film. I am not a film student and so I can only guess that the film is taught to gullible undergraduates as an all-time masterpiece containing multiple levels of deep meaning concerning the loss of human identity in modern industrial society. It is nothing of the sort. It is a rather tedious mix of sentimentality and slapstick, and was anachronistic even when it was made in 1936 in that it pretends to be from the silent era, which had ended in 1927.

To be fair, there are a few funny scenes, all of which take place in the factory. The ones involving food are the best. All the scenes outside the factory are boring and many of them are hopelessly sentimental. The music, composed by Chaplin, is horrendous. Chaplin's wife is pretty, but can't act.

If the film had had a proper story developing the factory theme it could have been better. As it is, it is a typical collection of music hall / vaudeville set pieces which are only loosely connected. Many of these scenes do not advance the plot and aren't funny. The scene where Chaplin sings is also not at all funny.

In my view Chaplin was a one-trick pony with one character and a silly walk. What he does, he does well, but there is really no range in it, and those who claim there is are deceiving themselves.

In short - there is no deep meaning to the film at all - don't believe those who say there is.

Django Unchained (2012)

Very good, but a little short of being a masterpiece

[8/10 · 23 January 2013]

I went to see this after weighing up a number of reviews from different sources. I can only say I wasn't disappointed, but despite the film's strengths it has one major weakness. I'll try to outline these without spoilers.

Strengths: (1) Outstanding performances from Leonardo Dicaprio, Samuel L. Jackson (both a big surprise as baddies and proving the versatility of these actors), plus Christoph Waltz was the most engaging character in the film, and Jamie Foxx was very good too. (2) Some excellent set- piece scenes, especially in the first half - the scene where Schultz meets Django is hilarious. (3) Also surprisingly, a really, really earnest attempt by Tarantino to grapple with the slavery issue on a visceral level. To criticize him for his use of the 'n' word and excessive violence is to miss the point. This is what slavery was like: nasty, brutal and racist. The film depicts the horror of slavery in all its repellent detail, and should be commended for this, not criticized.

Weakness: Only one, but it's a biggie. The last part of the film, from the conclusive interaction between Dicaprio and Waltz onwards, lost me emotionally, where I had been very involved up to that point. After this it became cartoonish (perhaps deliberately?) and instead of the ending being moving it just felt empty. The scene with the Australians, for example, was just silly, not believable, and not even funny at all. That Django was even in that position after what he had done not long before was ridiculous. Although Tarantino has cleverly avoided falling into cliché, I don't think the resolutions he came up with were convincing in terms of some of the characters' motivations. There were other options, which one can identify simply through memory of several Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. The outcome could be the same, but the method of arriving at it needed to be more believable.

I think, like so many directors and writers, Tarantino has struggled to get the ending right. Despite many claiming that the film is too long, I think in the end Tarantino actually needed to develop the denouement at greater length and more satisfactorily for it to have any emotional or intellectual bite. Kill Bill 2 suffered severely from similar problems.

Overall, then, a very worthy attempt at a revival of the spaghetti western (one of my favourite genres), but the script would have needed a redraft in the last third.

The Avengers (2012)

Vastly overrated here

[3/10 · 9 July 2012]

It's not really clear to me why this film is so highly rated here. There are only two things to recommend it: spectacular special effects and the acting of Robert Downey Jr and most of the rest of the ensemble, who make the absolute maximum out of the material. All kudos to them for their fine performances.

The main problem for me is with the story, which is absolute dross. What the hell is going on with the flying aircraft carrier, for example? Yeah, it looks great on screen, but in terms of logic there is none. Why are the giant bugs so intent on destroying or dominating Earth? Why are there these Scandinavian demigods running about when everybody knows these belong only to Norse mythology and not to the real world? I could go on but I won't bore all of you who are no doubt going to retort with lengthy explanations of all the ins and outs of the history of the fantasy universe this all arises from. However, viewing this as a stand-alone film, without knowing the extended comic-book background, the events in the film, however exciting, don't make much sense.

I'm sorry, I'm not a superhero buff (I admit it, I hate superhero comic books), but seriously none of this guff makes any sense. I'm sure Robert Downey Jr would agree if he wasn't cleverly making a fortune out of the Iron Man franchise. Give me intelligent SF any day.