Tag: Domhnall Gleeson

I am afraid I am going to turn into a total fanboy of Richard Curtis. He is the director of About Time, but before that he also directed Pirate Radio and Love Actually. Two movies that I could watch again and again and gave high marks to. Let’s just say I went into About Time with a bit of a bias.

A bit of a bias, and a bit of a romance-boner. Mmmm, love.

Time travel in movies can be a hard topic to get right. There are many ways they can set up the time travel concept, but the hard part comes in being consistent and still following the rules they set up logically. Plenty of bad films fail at this, About Time keeps it consistent and follows its rules throughout.

Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) was living a loveless and sad life until he learned a family secret. Before then, he always felt like he was missing something. That is when his dad (Bill Nighy) informed him that the men in his family can travel through time once they hit 21. A genetic condition or something.

They can’t go to the future and they can’t travel anywhere in time, but they can revisit moments in their own life, as long as they can remember that moment. They can relive them just for the experience, or they can change their actions, if they dare. Pretty awesome, but also very dangerous. They have to worry about the Butterfly Effect, so the changes can’t be too drastic. Once Tim makes his first trip, he knows exactly how he will use his new power. For love.

He quickly learns that using time travel to make someone love you doesn’t really work. No, he still has to find someone who finds him generally interesting, like the American Mary (Rachel McAdams). For whatever reason, she thinks he is charming, he just uses the time travel to fix his awkwardness. After all, practice makes perfect.

The good news is that this movie deals with more than just romance. Traveling through time gives an individual a lot of power, the power to affect the lives of those around you in meaningful ways. But could you morally handle the pressure of interfering with your friend’s life, instead of letting them choose their own destiny? Can you cope with the death of a loved one, if you know you have the ability to just visit them again in the past over and over again?

On the other hand, if you had some really sweet cake, you could always go back to that too.

By the end of the movie, I found myself crying as it attempted to tackle these hard subjects. About Time doesn’t fall into the same cliches that other films of the genre get caught up with. A lot of comparisons are being made between this movie and The Time Traveler’s Wife, and not just because Rachel McAdams is the the main love interest in both. They deal with love and time travel, but in completely different ways. The Time Traveler’s Wife was sad, but purely a drama/romance. About Time has equal parts drama and comedy, while dealing with more than just love, but life in general.

Gleeson hasn’t been in a lot of movies, and he currently is known for playing Bill Weasley in the later Harry Potter films, but he was a great choice as the lead role. He had a lot of help of course, with Nighy, a staple in Richard Curtis movies playing his father, his guide to the world of time travel, and the main source of drama in the final act. McAdams is really sweet in this film, and plays a character quite different than any of her previous roles. I also enjoyed the mother (Lindsay Duncan) and the sister (Lydia Wilson).

Overall, I think About Time will turn out to be one of those films that I can watch again and again, possibly getting something new out of it after every viewing. My opinions on it will also probably change as I get older, and experience events that the movie touches upon. It is a charming movie in every way. Thank you Richard Curtis, consider me a total fanboy now.

If you have never heard of Anna Karenina, then you might have your finger far from the pulse of the Russian Literature community. So you might be like me.

“But this is Tolstoy!” all two of you yell in anguish. Yeah, well, he is dead now, so how great can he have been?

This is not the first time a movie has been made from the book, no, it is the thirteenth time. Of the previous 12, I of course have seen zero of them, so this Joe Wright adaption shall be my first.

I think this is a literal example of a crowd being taken aback by something amazing.

There is a lot of plot going on in Anna Karenina. Maybe even too much. I am even surprise they can fit so much story in these movies. I have the basic gist of the story, but I cannot fill in a lot of the details on my own.

Anna Karenina (Keira Knightley) is a Russian aristocrat and in the spot light, married to Karenin (Jude Law). It is an okay life, she is rich and all, the sister of an eccentric Prince Stiva (Matthew Macfadyen) who is married to princess Dolly (Kelly Macdonald).

But something is missing. Passion is missing.

Passion is what she feels when she meets the Count Vronsky (Aaron Johnson), and then embarks on an affair, that will lead to divorce, hearsay, gossip, sexytimes, and a life filled with love. But with love, comes great sorrow.

Many other characters and players in this, but going over all their plots would literally kill me. But hey, Domhnall Gleeson is in this movie, so is Olivia Williams.

That woman in the top right is shunning SO HARD right now.

Here is a fact that I realized watching this movie, that is both unfortunate and wonderful. I don’t think someone watching this would consider it a straight adaption of the story and novel. Sure the setting is there, the character and plots are the same, but there is more than that going on in the movie from the visuals. It is not that I began to question if scenes were actually happening, but just they way they were presented were strange. Almost a giant metaphor, I think that they were trying to say that when you are an aristocrat, you must always put on a performance/show or else you might lose your prestige.

Alright, did that paragraph confuse you? I am sorry. It is just hard to describe.

But I think a problem with this movie is that I didn’t know the story or its many sub plotlines, and I quickly got lost in the flashy colors and grand scenes. I am not sure of half the things that happened, because the filmmakers probably assumed I knew about it. After all, wickedly famous novel, many movie adaptations? Well I am sorry, but I couldn’t get it to work.

The acting however was very well done, and I would say I loved the costumes and cinematography. The final message sucks and reminds me a bit of Gone With The Wind but I guess that is life. I just wish it was a bit easier to follow.

Originally I was going to just ignore Dredd 3D. Hopefully it would go to the cheap theater at some point and I’d watch it then, but $10? It’s probably going to suck. But then something happened. People I knew were liking it. It was weird. The internet liked it. What? Don’t people hate remakes?

I never got to see Judge Dredd, I was like six at that time and it is violent. Hell, I still haven’t seen it. But what I do know about it is the pop culture references, of course. Basically it can be summed up in these 10 seconds for all I care. LAWWWGGHHH!

Yeah, well if anything, this new guy looks like the law.

Dredd 3D is set in…the future! Giant ass cities, so many people. Lot of them live in these big tower things. The police force are now called Judges, because they will find criminals and carry out the sentencing on the spot, and all of it gets recorded. It is just what has to be done with this many people. Too bad only some small percent of reported murders even get investigated by the Judges, they are so busy.

Who is the judgiest judge of them all? Judge Dredd (Karl Urban. Who is also a Doctor, sometimes). He knows all the rules, all the tactics, and is a bad ass motherfucker, more or less. He has no remorse, and will sentence without a care. Definitely won’t ever remove his helmet. But he is asked to train a rookie, Anderson (Olivia Thirby) who is also a psychic. Yeah, one of those mutants, who lucked out and got a useful transformation instead of an extra hand out of her stomach.

So yeah, she suggests a place to go. These three guys got skinned and fell about 30 stories. Could have been worse, could have been from the top, 200 stories up! They investigate, turn it into a drug bust. New “Gang” is in the area, lead by a Ma-ma (Lena Headey), who took over the entire complex. Hell, turns out they have a new drug that is hitting the market strong. Basically it makes your body feel like life is in slow motion. Kind of awesome. But one of the people she takes from the bust, Kay (Wood Harris), she can tell killed the people directly. He might even know the entire working operation of the drug place, meaning if he gets interrogated, he might spill the beans. Can’t have that happen.

So Ma-Ma does what everyone does. Gets the weird Technie (Domhnall Gleeson) to lock down the building completely, and shut off communication, and tell the residents to kill the Judges. Can they get out alive, and you know, actually still obey the law?

She has no helmet eh? Well that makes things easier. You know, shooting her in the head.

Wait a second. People trapped in a living complex, and wanting to take down the leader with the whole building trying to kill him? That unfortunately sounds familiar. If you read my reviews a month ago, it would sound like The Raid: Redemption. That really is unfortunate!

These movies were probably being made around the same time, so the similar plots were not intentional. Just ruined the awesomeness of this one.

Karl Urban? Wow, what a Judge Dredd. Obviously the best I have seen, but he kicked a lot of ass, and I was cheering him on. Never removed his hat, so really couldn’t tell it was him, but he made that character awesome.

How about the 3D? Well, I can say don’t watch this movie in 2D. I think the reason for the drugs was just to see that shit in 3D and make some super slow motion deaths. But it worked. It was killing porn, basically, and looked amazing. Plot not the best, but the twists and turns were fun to watch. Definitely see this bad boy either in theaters, or your 50 inch blu ray 3D TV.