MD - I'm So Excited

Almovodar has gone back to revisit and try to recapture some of the daring, humour and subversion of earlier movies to deliver a parable on the nature of corruption and capitalist collapse. Unfortunately he seems to have emerged from a journey in the Time Machine Hot Tub rather than The Tardis.

I’m So Excited is a deplorably dated, misjudged and, most crucially, unfunny attempt at social satire. By conniving to drug the economy class of a stricken aircraft so they remain unaware of its peril and encouraging the business class passengers to indulge the last moments of potential demise it bludgeons the metaphor, but ultimately hits all the wrong notes. In Almovodar’s worldview the working classes caused the problem through their distracted ineptitude, remain passive throughout and emerge unscathed and full of gratitude to those more enlightened who have shepherded them to safety.

Meanwhile in Business Class...alongside a nauseating cabal including a High-end Madam, dodgy businessman and smarmy hit-man, the depiction of a group of stereotype airline staff is beyond retrograde. The out, camp menials provide the hackneyed, supposedly entertaining, alcohol-induced lip-synching distractions amid a torrent of sexualised one-liners that carry neither wit nor subtlety and make Are You Being Served look the height of sophistication; whilst the not-out high flyers do all the necessary high flying in their safe space of their cockpit closet.

Add to this an embarrassing cocktail and mescaline fuelled orgy scene that expects us to laugh along at a drug induced rape and we are so far beneath the barrel it takes all the scrapping we can muster just to get back into it.

By literally grounding the only partially interesting character arc, Almovodar inadvertently shows us just how up in the clouds the rest of his premise is.

I’m So Excited really is a dispiriting and pernicious experience and yet Almavador has pulled it off Emperor’s New Polyester Uniform style with the generally positive critical response to this movie. Had this been made in UK as Carry On Up The Gangway with the likes of David Walliams, Matt Lucas and Miranda Hart it would have received a reaction akin to Run For Your Wife.

I'm so disappointed.

2/10

MD - Bernie

Richard Linklater, fast becoming Soderbergh’s genre-defying replacement, directs with tight, small-scale and small-town panache as the talking head residents of Carthage, Tx act as our Greek chorus through this story of a communities’ unusual response to a primo facia heinous crime. It’s a sublime device that allows for a cavalcade of interesting characters and voices without long individual exposition; and some great one-liners.

In a revelatory performance Jack Black both turns and tones it down as god-fearing community loving assistant funeral director Bernie, who befriends toxic widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine). Somewhere along the line suspicion of the motives of Bernie’s friendship, and of his own proclivities, are lost as the force of his personality overwhelms the community; so that when tragedy does occur the ubiquitous Matthew McConaughey slaps his thigh and shakes his head with his now usual aplomb as the District Attorney bemused by the local’s support for the self-confessed wrong doer – and thus connives ways of ensuring a conviction.

Bernie is a study of the American small-town psyche and acceptance, where ‘good’ evil trumps just plain old ‘evil’ evil, personality ultimately overcomes prejudice, and where, whatever happens locally, the people in the next county will always be held in contempt and ridicule.  As contrary and unsettling as many of these people are, our entertaining time in their company flies past.

That this is based on a true story, as evidenced in the end credit sequence, adds an extra resonance to the contradictory nature of the human response to right and wrong. 

8/10

MD – Good Vibrations

A treat of a movie that uses its meagre budget to perfect effect in capturing Belfast at the brink of punk, inter-splicing newsreels and the constant undercurrent of paranoia and divide.

The cast plays it straight despite the fashions to capture the energy and excitement of a potential new dawn. The music becomes not just the narrative drive but an opportunity for reflection on just how startling something like hearing Teenage Kicks was for the first time in that context of depression, conflict and upheaval whatever side of the Irish Sea you were.

We get all we need to know about the characters without resorting to stereotypes and the motivations are clear – passion over the pragmatic, love over the frustration and, yes, the music over religion and politics. Occasionally it majestically skips and trips into the surreal and then jolts us back with an army patrol or the aftermath of another terrorist attack.

An absolute pleasure for men of a certain age and in “I’m going to play that again” the goosebump moment of the movie year.

9/10

MD – Promised Land

Promised much. Landed on its arse with the most ridiculous plot device.

A poor reward for the watchable cast and earnest acting.

5/10

MD - Spring Breakers

This really is a terribly misjudged attempt at trying to invent a cult movie. It has all the tick-boxes but none of the wit, intelligence or interest to register an even partial hit.

We lose any empathy with the four protagonists desire to see and experience the world outside of their own smalltown by the ridiculous notion that the way to raise money for their trip is to take on an additional job each and borrow some money from their evidently middle-class parents…Sorry make that buy some balaclavas, pull off an armed robbery and burn-out one their teacher’s truck.

The one dissenting voice – the Christian – soon recants and we are on our way to Spring Break which appears to be carnage at a resort full of white, wholesome, slim American college teens – no doubt the next generation of US leaders – drinking so much their clothes fall off. Then there’s a police raid and James Franco’s fearfully dentured rasta-twat, whose large gun collection is obviously a substitute for lack of fire power elsewhere, turns up and bails the girls out and then…..oh this is just too boring to re-live.

Spring Breakers is a crass, manipulative bit of 40-year-old wish fulfillment that deserves nothing but contempt. Avoid like…well like a Spring Break.

1/10 (for only being 89 minutes long)