Seen, Intouchables, EoW and Prometheus

You start with missing one week of writing and before you know it, its been four months. To be fair to myself, two of the last four months I was hugely pregnant, quite unwell and extremely uncomfortable. Then of course I had the baby; my second one, for those who might not know. Olivia turned 10 weeks old on the 9th and Mia is now 28 months old.

 

With two kids now I’ve quickly realised that I'm not going to have the time or the luxury – and time is a luxury – to write the way I used to. However, I shall stop procrastinating and be thankful to my girls for being good babies and letting me have some time do other things along with my mommy duties. Here’s what I’ve been up to (somewhat).

 

Recently* delivered: A baby! Natural birth, six hour labour, three pushes and totally stoned on laughing gas. Left the hospital in 22 hours. Say yay to superwoman. *grin* (10 weeks is fairly recent, no?)

 

Recently  watched: The Intouchables, End of Watch and Prometheus

 

The Intouchables was our first movie in the theatre since Mia’s birth! Thanks to Partner’s aunty – and Mia’s favouritest great-aunt – for making it happen.

 

The movie is apparently the second biggest hit ever in France, though globally it's received mixed reviews. While some reviewers found it heart-warming, moving etc., others have called it clichéd, formulaic and predictable. Two of my favourite film reviewers, Margaret Pomeranz (wears crazy ear rings, has crazier laugh) and David Stratton (will most definitely, absolutely hate any movie that has hand-held camera work) of At The Movies, ABC, have both given the movie three stars and say, “...the problem is that if, while you're having a good time with these characters, you start to think about the wider implications of the film, you might find yourself somewhat less enthralled.”

 

Personally, if not enthralled, I quite enjoyed the movie. While I am a big one for crying during soppy movies, I couldn’t quite manage tears while watching this one (in comparison, there were many happy tears during Amelie). I did manage quite a few laughs though. The humour was the first reason I enjoyed the movie and felt it was quite an achievement making people laugh when the protagonists were a quadriplegic and a down-on-luck-and-life bloke off the streets of Paris.  My second reason for liking the film was how it downplayed some of it’s obvious messages – racial prejudices/profiling, glamour of Paris vs gutter of Paris, haves and have nots, value of money vs value of health, pity towards the physically challenged etc. While it was definitely not subtle (agree with Ms Pomeranz there), it was not over the top and I didn’t feel I was preached too.

 

Margaret and David: I don’t understand how you could give three stars to The Intouchables and four stars to Mirror Mirror. Yes the costumes were great but it was a bloody boring movie!

 

End of Watch  is about two LAPD cops who  uncover a nasty cartel secret and are then hunted down by said cartel. We watched this movie at home after putting the kids to bed and with ma-in-law watching too. The highlight for me was my MIL’s shock at the language. “What did they say? I only heard f-this, f-that,” was her constant complaint. :D

 

The climax of this movie left me cold and had me rewinding to see if I had missed something. I was waiting for more when the credits just started rolling. While I don’t have Mr Stratton’s aversion towards movies shot with a hand-held camera – he gives one and a half stars to this one! – it perhaps could have done with a little less of the camera moving everybloodywhere.

 

I also found the story/action v.e.r.y slow to take off. Actually it never really takes off but sort of creeps up on you. Once it gets going though, it bloody well gets you. The action sequences are edge-of-the-seat stuff, though I could have done with more of them. From thinking “All right, get on with it”, I found myself wanting to know what happens to the characters and even wanting them to be safe. While I didn’t think the camaraderie between the two partners is anything I haven’t seen before in a cop movie, I did begin to care about them somewhat. And that’s why I found the ending a huge disappointment. I am all for realistic movies and life-is-a-bitch finales but this one was just too abrupt. (I actually really, really wanted a revenge movie.)

 

As for Prometheus , despite Michael Fassbender and a very cool spaceship, the movie lost me five minutes after the spaceship lands on mysterious-planet-with-possible-creators-of-humans. 

 

So some very rich guy spends “trillions” to get this ship and specialist crew to this planet in another galaxy (!). I am interested. They are looking for God. I am still interested. Some of the crew gets off the ship to investigate mysterious structure that has mysterious cave… I am "hmmm".  And then the reconnaissance team ENTERS the cave! In a strange planet! Like mate, have you not heard of automated, robotic probes/rovers? We used them in 2012 and your bloody expedition is supposedly happening in 2094. And you’ve got trillions. What kind of scientific moron sends in half the crew to check out possibly dangerous conditions without first sending in a robot?

My brain was too preoccupied with this obvious lack of judgement to really notice anything else about the movie. While the movie was a great load of crap, the comments on this page  are fun – I think ‘gelatoman’ probably ate his hand, he sounds SO irritated with the movie. Also, if at all you've seen the film and are wondering about that opening scene, or the names of the creatures etc., this article is excellent.

Coming soon: More on recently this and that.