Occasionally you sit down to a film with no expectations and from as little as a minute into the film you know you’re going to love it. So was the case with The Descendants.

From the opening narration in which he explains that living in paradise doesn’t necessarily mean that life is paradise, George Clooney is captivating in the role of Matt King, a descendant of one of Hawaii’s first white land-owning families.

Matt’s extended family, which is spread across the Hawaii islands, has a decision to make as to whether to sell a large plot of highly desirable beachfront virgin forest on Kauai to developers, who will inevitably open it up for tourist development.

Most of the family have already made their mind up. To them it’s a no-brainer – the sale will make them all rich. However, as the sole trustee of the land, Matt has the ultimate responsibility to make the final decision – a decision that forces him to consider the opposing views of his family and the islanders who want the land to remain unspoilt. This is all at the same time as facing a personal crisis.

At the beginning of the film we see that Matt’s wife is involved in a water skiing accident which puts her in a coma. This forces Matt to effectively become a single parent to his two daughters, one of whom is the teenager Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) who returns from boarding school with a bad attitude.

The bad attitude is borne out of resentment; resentment for her father who up until then has always put his business before his family, and resentment for her mother who, unbeknownst to Matt, has been having an affair with another man.

Rocked by his wife’s accident, Matt’s world comes crashing down once again when Alexandra blurts out the truth about his wife. This devastating, dramatic moment for the main character actually sets the stage for one of the films funniest scenes, as George Clooney, looking completely un-cool in high-waisted khaki shorts and Hawaiian shirt, slips on a pair of thongs (flip-flops) and runs down the mountain to challenge the friends of his wife who must have known about the affair. If you’ve ever attempted to run in thongs you can imagine how ungainly this looks.

If I tell you that The Descendants is written and directed by Alexander Payne, who previously wrote and directed another favourite of mine – Sideways, you may know that you’re not just getting a moving, family drama. A wonderful black humour ripples throughout this movie, at times blending tragedy and hilarity within the same scene.

The bulk of the story follows Matt moving around the Hawaii islands attempting to track down his wife’s lover, at the same time as trying to deal with his unruly daughter and her brain-dead friend Sid, who is the source for many of the laughs throughout the film. The carefully crafted script ensures that the business, family and emotional troubles are tied together expertly in the final scenes.

The movie is scored throughout with beautiful, soft, Hawaiian music – the kind of music you want to listen to whilst sat at a beach bar on a tropical paradise island watching the sun descend over the horizon.

After watching a lot of films lately which were, frankly, disappointing, it was a joy to sit down to something which gripped me from beginning to end. George Clooney fully deserves his Oscar nomination for this film.

Inception set a new benchmark for sci-fi movies. This was genuinely a new idea expertly executed by a great director – Christopher Nolan.

So when I saw the trailer for In Time
I was hoping that this would be the next in a new era of interesting films based on an original concept.

It certainly has the potential from the synopsis. In Time is set in the future where people stop ageing at the age of 25 and are engineered to live only 1 more year. To continue living people have to purchase top-ups of time, just like topping up a mobile phone balance. There is no money as such – time is the currency. People work and receive their income in units of time, and everything is paid for with those units of time.

This world of the future is much like today; the rich can top-up with decades at a time, essentially becoming immortal, while the poor have to beg, borrow or steal enough hours just to make it through the day.

Justin Timberlake plays Will Salas, a man in the latter category who, through being in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets falsely accused of murder and is forced to go on the run with a hostage – Sylvia Weis, played by Amanda Seyfried.

There’s not much more you need to know. Unlike Inception, this isn’t going to make you want to go back and watch it again to make sure you followed it all.

In Time tries to tread a line between being a popcorn Sci-fi on one hand, and a social commentary on the inherent unfairness in capitalism on the other. It’s somewhere between Robin Hood and Bonnie and Clyde.

The message is a little muddled though. A number of times in the film Will Salas is questioned about the morality of stealing and his reply is ‘Is it wrong to steal if it has already been stolen?’, but there’s no clarification on what he means. The wealth on show in the area known as New Greenwich seems to be mostly inherited wealth, so in what way has it been stolen?

As is the custom for these movies, Will Salas does some serious ass kicking. At the beginning of the movie he’s an ordinary factory worker, yet halfway through the movie he turns into James Bond, taking baddies out with comical ease. Unless I missed it there’s no explanation of where he got his fighting and shooting skills.

Also, some of the special effects were decidedly dodgy. In particular there’s one where the car the ‘goodies’ are driving flips over. It reminded me of that scene in Die Another Day where the Drag Racing car falls over the side of the ice cliff. I was looking for the strings – very Thunderbirds-esque.

If I were rating this film on quality I’d probably give it 2 stars but my ratings are simply based on how much I enjoyed the film. Despite all the flaws it is fairly entertaining, hence 3 stars. Just take my advice – turn off your brain at the start of the film!

I’ll preface this by saying this is the first film I have seen from the controversial Danish film maker Lars von Trier. I’m aware of his work and had an idea what to expect. I’ve got Antichrist queued up to watch but haven’t dared to sit through it yet.

Melancholia tells the story of two sisters and is in two parts. Part 1 focuses on Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and her wedding day. To begin with she seems like any normal newly wed – deliriously happy and truly in love. It isn’t long, however, until we learn that something is not quote right with Justine. She suffers from depression, maybe she’s bi-polar, it isn’t spelt out. As the night progresses the demons inside her take hold and self-destruction begins.

The second half focuses on her sister – Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and her anxiety caused by the impending event.

I should mention at this point that the impending event is the potential end of the world. I’m not giving anything away here as the end of the world takes place in the first 5 minutes of the movie. A completely bizarre opening which features slow-motion images of scenes from throughout the film set to the haunting strings of Wagner, culminating in a planet, which we later learn is called Melancholia, approaching and colliding with Earth.

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this film. The first half was fairly interesting, albeit flawed. The second half was simply boring. How can the impending end of the world be so boring? The film seemed to just drag on and on and on.

Melancholia is not a mainstream movie. It’s an art piece which was nominated for the Palm d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. It has been nominated for a number of different awards and has received a lot of good reviews from film critics.

When I read reviews of art pieces such as this it makes me wonder whether the 5 star rating is due to the critic generally thinking it is a great movie, or, because they want to be part of the pretentious intelligentsia club and don’t want people to think they don’t understand the underlying meanings of the film.

I got that Melancholia is a film that explores mental illness. I could see that the anxiety that increased within Claire as Melancholia came ever closer to Earth was used as a metaphor for how depression works; the growing feeling of despair that builds up even though you know there’s no logical reason for it. I get all that and I’m sure that people who have suffered with depression will find Melancholia painfully familiar. That doesn’t make it a great film though.

I’m not averse to arty independent films, and I don’t necessarily mind strange films, but even strange films should have their own internal logic. The actions of some of the characters in Melancholia just didn’t seem plausible. For example, the idea that Justin’s boss would set her a work task on her own wedding night, and her mother acting the way she does at her own daughters wedding reception, just didn’t ring true. There are some callous people out there but does anyone seriously know anybody that would behave in that way?

Another aspect of the film that grated was the camera work. Yet another film using the annoying ‘shaky’ hand-held camera technique.

On the positive there is a good supporting cast, including Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt and Stellan Skarsgård. It’s hard to watch Kiefer Sutherland though and not think of Jack Bauer. When Justine’s mother pissed him off at the wedding reception I was half expecting him to do some arse kicking!

Talking about Jack Bauer, a lot of the camera angles used in Melancholia seemed to be copied directly from the later seasons of 24, such as filming conversations as if observed from half-hidden behind a corner. Those type of techniques could work in horror or spy films but it’s really unnecessary for what’s basically a drama.

Also on the positive side is the cinematography. The setting of the film is never mentioned and it’s made hard to discern by the mixed nationality of the characters – there’s no explanation why Justine has got an American accent, whereas her sister and parents are English. It looked to me like the film was shot in Scotland but I now know the exterior shots were largely shot around Tjolöholm Castle in Sweden, and it does look stunning.

This is the second film of 2011 that I’ve watched about another planet approaching Earth, the other being Another Earth, and in both films the other planet is used mainly as a plot device. Neither film is worth a second viewing.

Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is an expert in his trade. We learn throughout the film how good he is and how well regarded he is by his peers. When he goes to the trade shows he doesn’t need to fall for the patter of the sales guys – he makes all his own equipment, perfectly tuned to his needs.

Like many of the great films of the 70’s, The Conversation requires a little patience. It’s a tad slow in the first half but it’s not for nothing. The slow pace helps to give us a sense of who Harry Caul is.

We learn that he’s a surveillance expert now working in New York after an assignment on the West Coast resulted in the death of three people. He likes to see himself as the ultimate professional and tells himself he’s not personally responsible – he was simply hired to do a job. Yet we can clearly see that he’s riddled with guilt, and determined not to get personally affected by any jobs in the future.

He sees himself as the consummate professional. His job is to record the conversations, not to wonder why his clients want the conversations to be recorded in the first place. The less he knows the better – he can’t feel responsible if he has no clue about the potential consequences.

He takes the same principles into this latest job. He’s paid to covertly record a conversation between two people in a public park, no easy job when you consider it’s lunch-time in Manhattan so the park is very busy and the subjects are constantly moving – suspicious that they may be being watched

After successfully making the recordings he needs to deliver a finished product to his client. The initial raw recordings are not much use; the conversation is distorted and comes in and out as the subjects are constantly moving. We see how Harry fine-tunes and mixes separate sources together, filtering out background interference so that the target conversation slowly but surely becomes audible.

This is where Harry’s problems begin. The more he listens to the tapes in a repeated effort to capture the full conversation, the more he becomes absorbed by the substance of the conversation taking place. He can’t help but become concerned when he realises the two people being recorded appear to be in grave danger.

Unfortunately, like many security guys, Harry doesn’t ‘eat his own dog food’. Later in the movie the tapes of the recordings are stolen because he fails to secure his workplace properly. He also allows himself to be tricked by a competitor when his private conversation is recorded using a ball-point pen – a gift from the competitor who is so desperate to go into business with him. These lapses from an otherwise diligent professional ends up putting himself in as much danger as he believes the subjects of his recordings are.

I loved the attention that The Conversation paid to Harry’s tradecraft. As a security professional myself it was wonderful to see that tools and methods that Harry uses. It’s also interesting to see how little has changed. The technology may have moved on but everything else seemed very familiar. For example the trade show that Harry attends seems just like any modern-day security conference, just without the Plasma screens; and with vendors trying to get the attendees on their mailing lists instead of email lists as they do today.

You can’t watch The Conversation now and not think of Enemy of the State
, in which Gene Hackman plays a very similar role. I wonder if Gene Hackman chose the role in Enemy of the State because he loved playing Harry Caul, or the producers of Enemy of the State chose Gene Hackman because he was so great in The Conversation?

The Conversation came out two years after the Watergate scandal and the influence is clear to see; exploring the themes of paranoia, invasion of privacy and its consequences. The Conversation is not an action-paced thriller like Enemy of the State, it’s more mysterious and cerebral.

As the pieces come together, The Conversation culminates with a shocking twist – a twist which I’m glad I didn’t see coming. Even after the film had finished it took a couple of hours for me to fully appreciate all the intricacies of the plot.

I’ve had the second Transformers movie for quite a while but it has been fairly low down on my to-watch list. With the third movie in the franchise now out I thought I’d give it a go to see if it’s as bad as the reviews suggest. It is.

The first Transformers movie was passable, just. But once you’ve seen cars turn into robots the novelty soon wears off. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is basically Transformers 1, just louder and with even more robots hitting each other. Thirty minutes in and I was already forcing myself to stay awake.

When there were actual human beings on screen having a conversation, it wasn’t too bad, but as soon as it switched again to yet another action scene it quickly lost me.

The problem with the big spectacle action set pieces is that they’re 90% CG. Yes, CG has come a long way in the last few years but it’s still not anywhere near realistic. Go back and look at a spectacular action scene shot before CG, such as the train crash near the beginning of The Fugitive. A lot of money way spent on that scene and it really is breathtaking and realistic – because it uses real, tangible objects. CG just doesn’t have the depth. It’s like watching a computer game.

Michael Bay publicly admitted that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was below even his own poor par (his exact words were “When I look back at it, that was crap”). Apparently that was after Shia LaBeouf declared that he “wasn’t impressed with what we did”.

I really don’t know if I can be bothered to watch the next one.