Fatso.co.nz - October DVD Reviews

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QUEST FOR FIRE
* * * * 1/2 (4.5 Stars)

Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Quest for Fire is quite unlike any movie ever made. Imagine the first 20 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey expanded into a full-length feature and you might have something like this remarkable look at the barbaric day-to-day lifestyle of prehistoric cavemen. Shot in Canada, Iceland, Scotland and Kenya, the film doesn’t have any recognisable dialogue as such, but a primitive language devised by writer Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) made up of animal-like grunts. We follow several tribesmen (among them Twin Peaks’s Everett McGill and Hellboy’s Ron Perlman) who scrounge around a barren landscape in search for food while contending with the elements and other hungry animals and savage tribes. Fascinating in an anthropological sense – the make-up work and costumes are all convincingly done – but it’s also a stunningly visual film with images that are both poetic and primal.

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TINTIN AND I
* * * * (4 Stars)

Whether you're a Tintin fan or not, this excellent, unexpectedly poignant documentary on its creator Georges Remy aka Hergé is an intriguing watch. Being a avid reader when I was younger, I wasn't prepared for the depth and sophistication of his comics. Sure, these are still globe-hopping escapist adventures at heart – Hergé has said that Tintin was modeled on himself, an expression of his desire to be a hero, to break free from his otherwise elusive and introverted shell. But Tintin and I posits him in a larger context through archived recordings from '70s by interviewer Numa Sadoul, who becomes a kind of psychiatrist for Hergé. For someone who doesn't like talking about himself, Hergé reveals a lot to Sadoul: his mediocre childhood, honing his craft under the right-wing Catholic influence of one Reverend Wallez and later accused of being a Nazi sympathiser and imprisonment. Experts chime in detailed dissections of the comic; there's a study of psychological subtext – the white snowscapes of "Tintin in Tibet" represented his yearning for purity during a tough period in his life. Best of all is the film's moving subplot involving Chang, a Chinese artist who helped Hergé realistically flesh out the details in the backdrop of his masterpiece "The Blue Lotus".

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STREET KINGS
* * * 1/2 (3.5 Stars)

With Training Day, Harsh Times and now Street Kings, David Ayer seems to be carving out a name for himself as a director who specialises in films cynically depicting Los Angeles as a cesspool of crime. Co-written by L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy – someone who knows more than a little about the city’s criminal world – the film is yet another corrupt cop thriller full of morally grey areas. Keanu Reeves is Tom Ludlow, a detective working under the supervision of Forest Whitaker, whose routine work includes doing dodgy frame-ups of crooks. However, he finds himself on the receiving end of the force’s corrupt machinations when he begins investigating the death of a fellow officer. Nothing new, and often laughably overwrought, but if you like this sorta stuff, it’s not half-bad, a tough, luridly compelling B-movie loaded with brutal, fast-paced action. It’s also Keanu’s best role in ages.

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IRON MAN
* * * * (4 Stars)

Robert Downey Jr.’s witty, stellar turn as Tony Stark/Iron Man is arguably the best casting in any comic book film adaptation yet; he’s so perfect, and so crucial to the film’s success, that it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. The film itself is a welcome change from the sullen, tortured temperaments of Batman Begins and Superman Returns, directed by Jon Favreau (Zathura) with a humorous, infectiously light touch. Sure, Favreau’s a bit of a journeyman compared to other comic book adapters like Tim Burton, Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan, but he delivers a couple of superb action sequences, including an exciting aerial chase with two fighter jets that quite possibly obliterates every law of physics in the book. Even though Iron Man is predominantly Downey’s show, supporting character parts are marvelously written and played: a stunningly redheaded Gwyneth Paltrow provides a hint of romance as Pepper Potts, his faithful secretary, while an unrecognisable, bald Jeff Bridges makes for a formidable villain as Stark’s friend-turned-nemesis Obadiah Stone. A fine first step for Marvel Comics, who’re making their debut in the world of feature production.

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UNTRACEABLE
* * (2 Stars)

The latest thriller to exploit the internet as essentially unpoliceable territory for the broadcast of objectionable material, Untraceable stars Diane Lane and Colin Hanks as FBI cyber-crime agents on the hunt for a serial killer who’s streaming his dirty deeds on a website called killwithme.com. The twist is he’s making visitors to the site complicit in the murders: every hit will speed up the victim’s deaths. Just another by-the-numbers effort in the post-Saw cinema of sadism, even though the grisly set-pieces here - including death by blood draining, heat lamps and sulphuric acid - won’t muster more than a blase yawn from anyone who's grown tired of torture-porn. Lane’s okay, but still a stock character in a film of meagre thrills and even less surprises. Without her, Untraceable would be unwatchable.

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