My review of the film 'The Book Of Eli'

Ahh, the Book of Eli, what can I say about this mess of a film? It started off on a very promising note, but from the moment we see the clichéd gothickly dressed, post apocalyptic woman pretending to ask for help, it descended down the same route as films such as ‘Waterworld’ and ‘Mad Max’. What is it with this ‘I don’t care about anyone-don’t want to speak to anyone-act like a moody teenager’ character that the protagonists of these types of films employ throughout the movie? As usual in a world where they can’t even find some shampoo, there seems to be a huge amount of powerful weaponry and ammunition lying about. Speaking of shampoo, which is made such a fuss of when it is found – why does the young woman Solara appear to have access to all the beauty products she can get her hands on; not to mention a salon quality hair style, and her mother too? More about her to come. I also ignored the very blatant KFC product placement of their branded moisture towels; even though it came up twice. It goes from bad to worse when there is a shoot out, and Denzel Washington’s character has a bullet hit the top of his coat, just behind his neck, but not him. Okay, so it appears that maybe this guy is in some way immortal, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that being part of the plot so far. The film then moves to an old house in the middle of the desert, occupied by a completely pointless and underused Frances De La Tour and Michael Gambon. The speed at which they are killed leaves you wondering exactly how they managed to survive this long in the first place. First let me mention the second annoying piece of product placement – the slow and obvious pan from a car battery to a “Motorola” loudspeaker. Now, the nature of their deaths. They are living in this house, that when hit by bullets, splinters as if made with balsa wood. Yet with the front of the house quickly disintegrating under fire, the four people in the house, standing up against the front wall, somehow manage not to get hit, or even look like they are in any danger whatsoever. Now we move onto Eli actually getting shot – yes he actually is wounded by a direct shot to his torso. This now begs the question from the scene where he is shot in the back of the neck – why didn’t he drop dead immediately from that bullet? Basically from there on I was left with many queries swimming around in my head-

-What was this voice that told him to head west to Malcolm McDowell (if it was “God”, then we assume he exists in the film, so why didn’t it prevent the apocalypse in the first place? In stead of having Eli bring the book to a safe place so that the world would eventually go the way it went before)
-Where did he learn to fight so well
-Why had it taken him 3 years to walk from one side of America to the other, when it should only have taken between 100-200 days depending on all the obvious factors
-(many others, but they are mostly just me being nitpicky)

The final scene is a complete joke – the young girl he has been travelling with, dresses up like Lara Croft, and heads out into the wastes on her own – WHY?? Is it that she has to carry on what Eli started? NO, the book is safe, there is nothing left to do. We saw from a previous scene in the film, that she wouldn’t last 2 minutes out there on her own, but now she’s heading out armed with a huge knife we know she has no idea how to handle! While this scene was playing through, the few people that were in the cinema around me, started laughing with me in disbelief.

My review of the film 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll'

January 11th (my birthday)

On the way home we discussed whether or not we should go and see ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock n Roll’ featuring Andy Serkis. I was in two minds about it, because after seeing ‘Ray’, I told myself I wouldn’t watch any more biographies because they simply are never interesting enough. This film however was in a league of its own, it was superbly acted by everyone, especially Serkis, it wasn’t the usual simplistic approach of ‘well this happened so this is why they are like this’, and of course, the music was great. Now, I know and like a few of Ian Dury’s songs, as they are always played on the radio, but to my wife they meant something, because she had liked them when they first came out. What was quite funny was the other “show” that was going on just to the right of us in the cinema. A man of about 50 years old had obviously dragged his wife along to see this, but she was not happy at all. Throughout much of the film she was sat rigid in her chair, sometimes with her hands over her ears, while he was nodding his head along to every song that started playing. He also did that thing of laughing louder than was natural, because he had spotted an ‘in joke’ or a reference. Is this some sort of signal or wild call that people make hoping that others in the audience will be impressed that they had spotted it as well. Or was it a ‘look at me I’m cool, I was there man, you wouldn’t understand’.