Nick Bryan

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Four Lions – One Review

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Earlier this week, I lucked into an early screening of the new Chris Morris movie Four Lions, which I gather is not on general release for another week. So, with my exciting advantaged position, I thought this was a good time to post a review on my blog. So, was it any good?

Well, obviously. This film has been knocking around for a while, talked up by millions as the next big topical controversial sweary Brit flick of the times. Basically, the press think this is the next In The Loop. And I fucking loved In The Loop, so I was excited.

The film itself is about a bunch of would-be terrorists in Britain, trying to plan their epic, world-changing jihad. Really, really badly. Farce ensues, and considering this is from Chris Morris and the writers of Peep Show, it does so with the exact mix of satire and cringing humiliation that you’d expect.

Yes, it’ll probably be done by the media as somehow “endorsing terrorism”, but all you need to do is glance at the actual movie to realise that almost all the terrorists are portrayed as being ridiculously thick. The only exception is the lead character, who is allowed to seem sane, albeit obviously misguided.

If the comedy had been less brilliantly honed, this film might have been disturbing, but it’s so expertly done that you honestly barely notice the subject matter much of the time due to being busy laughing. Even when reality does intrude, it’s in a measured way, and with jokes interspersed.

If you’re easily offended, I suspect you will be, but I think we have to live in a world where we’re allowed to mention these things, joke about them and discuss them in an adult manner. Turning them into taboo subjects and leaving them permanently out of reach makes them seem mysterious, horrible and terrifyingly efficient.

In short, if you don’t see this film, or at least accept its existence, the terrorists win.

A Rare Book Review: Cloud Atlas

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Tonight, I finished reading the novel Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (no, not that David Mitchell), which I started a couple of weeks into the new year and have been picking through ever since. In my defence, it is quite long.

I didn’t think many blogs would want my personal opinions about a years-old book, but after completing this Herculean reading task, I felt compelled to type something about it. Cloud Atlas is most memorable for two reasons, I think. Firstly, the sheer scale and ambition of it.

Mitchell crafts a complex saga, comprising of six separate narratives, nestled within each other in Russian doll style. Starting in the nineteenth century, it works its way forward to the far flung future, then works its way back out again. Amongst these strands, ideas about humanity and reincarnation lurk, along with the six distinct storylines themselves. It’s truly an impressive feat.

Hand-in-hand with that is the actual writing. Writing all these different characters, in different time periods with different writing styles and vocabularies is no small accomplishment. He skates genres from detective novel to escape to sci-fi. But Mitchell pulls it off and, worst of all, makes it look easy. He’s clearly a very, very good writer. The bastard.

Seriously, the worst part is the way each of the plots has their own supporting cast and, you get the feeling, could easily sustain a novel of their own. It’s a great book, and although it took me ages to read, I’m compensated by now feeling like I’ve read six different books. I thoroughly recommend it, if you hadn’t guessed.

If I had to complain (and I really do), the scale of the feat being accomplished kinda made me expect something more transcendentally amazing to happen. He’s crafted six engrossing storylines, but they never exactly come together to form a single amazing hypernarrative in the way I was hoping they might. It remains six separate arcs with call-backs going between them.

But that’ll teach me to take back cover blurbs too seriously, really. It remains an amazing work of book-writing, and definitely worth a try.

Avatar – Belated Review

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Finally saw Avatar a week ago. However, my brief attempts to interest ‘proper’ blogs in a review didn’t go well, as the movie is now over two months old. So I ended up writing this piece for Dorkadore, focusing on its massive financial success (albeit with a few review-esque snippits).
However, I review things out of love, not just as a “job”. So I wrote a straight review of Avatar and am posting it here for the entertainment of anyone who may care.

(Notes: Yes, some points are repeated across the two pieces. And yes, a few small spoilers are contained within.

NICK REVIEWS AVATAR AFTER EVERYONE ELSE

The James Cameron-masterminded sci-fi epic, Avatar, has been out for a couple of months now. The build-up happened, filmgoers got excited, then readied themselves for an anticlimax, and finally felt slightly disappointed when reviews came out and were positive but not spectacular.

Despite all of that, it has ended up becoming the most successful film of all time. Nearly everyone has ended up seeing it in some form, even if only because their friends were going. Which is what happened to me yesterday.

I hadn’t bothered with it until now, because… well, I don’t like hard sci-fi, I can’t stand elves and I disliked most of Titanic intensely. But, you know, it’s the most successful film of all time. I don’t like to feel left out.

Fortunately, Avatar is to hard sci-fi what Emmanuelle is to hard porn. All the same parts are there, but they never get used in sufficient detail to qualify. The ‘avatar’ technology itself, easily the most interesting concept in the film, is skimmed over a tad, in favour of the more conventional culture clash-morality tale-love story involving the (concealed) white man among the noble savages.

Which is frustrating for those of us of the dork persuasion, but I am not convinced we’re the target audience here. Cameron may have included a swathe of sci-fi trappings to differentiate his film from Pocahontas, but this is definitely a film for the movie-going masses. If he’d spent the entire time delving into the intricacies of body-swapping, the record-busting box office figures would probably not have happened.

Not to mention, the story isn’t entirely the point either. Or rather, it is, but only to provide a setting for some lovely visuals. And they are gorgeous, make no mistake. Cameron’s vision of the multi-coloured alien world of Pandora is amazingly realised here, and once again manages to draw in the viewer, even as they moan about plot predictability.

So, yes, even though the plot is mostly predictable, the dialogue sometimes groan-worthy and, yes, ‘unobtanium’ is a horrific name for a rare and valuable element, you can see why it has done well. It may not be anything ground-breaking, but it’s a simple, lush modern-day fable. It was nearly three hours long, yet I was rarely bored. And if nothing else, I’d rather watch this again than Titanic any day.