Boy, this film is bad… Just another zombie film with an attempt at an intelligent script.
Jim wakes up in an empty city of London. On wandering around he first encounters a few zombies, then a couple of “uninfected”. The group leaves the city to find a safe place and a series of predictable events occur. Nowhere the film reaches any level and I really wonder where the IMDb rating comes from.
Nope, do not watch this Boyle film.
20 Years after the original film, the director rattled up the original crew to make a ’20 years after’. Everybody indeed is 20 years older and the story also plays 20 years after the first film. Not much script is wasted as to what happened to the characters in these 20 years though.
Renton moved to Amsterdam with the money he stole from his buddies at the end of the first film. Begbie spent all these years in jail and Spud and Sick Boy just stayed where they always lived. Then Renton returns to Edinburgh. His old buddies are, of course, not happy with him leaving with their money. The betrayal has not worn. Especially’s Begbie’s hatred has only grown with 20 years in jail and he was not an easy person to begin with.
This is used as an umbrella for a film that sometimes reminds of the first film (especially in the beginning), but there is more drama than I remember of 20 years ago. There is some of the gory humor again, but much less drug infused crazyness.
The acting is good, the story less so (a couple of odd mistakes), but overall “T2” is highly entertaining, especially for people who know the first film, since there are many references, flashbacks and inside jokes that will remain unclear to people whose first Trainspotting this is.
No need to see it on the big screen though, but when you like the first film, “T2” will probably not disappoint you.
Aha, DVDpost.com sent me two Danny Boyle films, the not too great “Sunshine” which I apparently forgot I already saw and “Trance”.
Unfortunately “Trance” is not a too great film either… Starting as a fairly standard crime thriller about a stolen painting, the film goes towards somthing of an “Inception“-like story when the main character receives hypno-therapy to find out where he hid the stolen painting. The story makes the obliged twists and turns while Franck (one of the lesser parts of Vincent Cassel) and his buddies try to find the information that they are looking for with the help of the beautiful hypno-therapist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson, Gail in “Sin City“). I shall not tell you anything more lest you would want to see the film. It is not that good though, so if you are going to watch it, is up to you.
Boyle goes from good films (“Trainspotting”, “127 Hours”) to boring films such as “Slumdog Millionaire”. “Sunshine” falls in the latter category. “Sunshine” is a blabla moralistic scifi film in which a spaceship is sent to the dying sun in order to blow it up and create a new star. The ship is called “Icarus” so the destiny is clear from the beginning. Of course the crew has to make the choices between their own lives and mankind and changing and debunking their mission for minor purposes. The entire film plays on the spaceship with a small crew which naturally consists of men and women, scientists of different professions. The story contains a bit too many ‘why’s and ‘yeah right’s. Nope, scifi is not really my genre. Boyle does not make “Sunshine” an exception either.
Inspite of all the attention that this film got when it just got out and the high rating at IMdB, I found “Slumdog Millionaire” quite a dull film. We see Jamal, a teenager, in some horrible TV quiz show. He has to answer questions and when he has them all correct, he will become a millionaire. Each question is associated with his past in the slums of Mumbai. The film portrays the unromanticised version of Indian culture. Children living in boxes, Muslims getting slain by Hindus, children recruited to beg for money and being directed towards prostitution, the gigantic gap between rich and poor, corruption, etc. We follow Jamal from his very early days until he becomes a teenager. Especially the gameshow scenes are tedious, the flashback scenes are more interesting. The overall result is not overall convincing, but that could also be caused by the fact that I saw this film on a very small screen in an airplane with too much noise on the background.
My first ‘film on demand’ was “127 Hours”, a film that had been on my list for a while. I must say that this ‘film on demand’ is quite a nice function for digital tv. They have another few titles that I want to see (most of it is rubbish). The only thing is that it is quite expensive. In any case, “127 Hours” is about a young man who travels alone and gets stuck in a cliff for… 127 hours. Imagine that, 5 days! His arm is crushed by a boulder when Aron falls into a cliff. This leaves him, of course, with almost no space to move. The rock obviously is not going anywhere and Aron makes an inventarisation of what he has in his backpack. Inspite of climbing material such as ropes, nothing that helps him getting out of awkward position. Aron proves himself realistic in his situation and inventive as well and he is not ready to give up. Of course the film can be but little more than filming Aron in his cliff, but since he (of course) starts to reflect upon his past and becomes illusionary, Danny “Trainspotting” Boyle has the freedom to add flashbacks and other scenes. The larger part is just Aron and his boulder though. Yet, “127 Hours” is a very entertaining film. When Aron runs out of water and the battery of his camera dies, the film goes towards its inevitable climax.
An oldy again. I saw it a long time ago and recently it was on TV. I suppose all of you have seen this film a few times already, so this review is just for the possible single left who didn’t. Danny Boyle made the wonderfull film “Shallow Grave” (like “Trainspotting” with Ewan McGregor), the not so great “A Life Less Ordinary” (also with Ewan McGregor but also Cameron Diaz), films that I haven’t seen like “The Beach” (with Leonardo Di Caprio) and one that I still want to see “28 Days Later”, among others of course.
“Trainspotting” gives a grim inside in the life of a heroine addict, the addicted periode, the process of getting rid off the addiction, etc. All is told in a totally Scottish manner and with a wonderfull sence of humour. The filming isn’t as strange as I remembered, but all in all this is still very enjoyable.