Saturday, January 8, 2011

Somewhere...other than HERE.

Urgh. So today NEEDED to be good, but an unfortunate choice at the cinema turned it right back round and was NOT what I needed. After a successful walk around Paris, going to all the places where The Tourist was filmed in Paris and a quick trip to WHSmiths, I walked back to the cinema to see 'Somewhere'. It stars Elle Fanning and Stephen Dorff (new hottie in the town!), and is basically about a famous guy having to build a relationship with his daughter. OH MY GOD. It was AWFUL. I didn't think it would/could be so BAD! 

Ok. The film opens with a still view of part (key word: PART) of a race track. You hear an engine revving, and suddenly a car races past the screen and disappears round the track (which you can't see, but you can hear the engine). THIS HAPPENS FIVE TIMES. Yes, FIVE. And for the whole time, you're staring at a close-up of the same part of the track. Whoopee. A thriller in the making, surely. Then FINALLY the car stops (thankfully in the screen shot) and Stephen Dorff gets out and...Just. Stands. There. And then the screen goes black and there's a cast list. I actually thought they'd got the film reel mucked up. But nope... 

Then you're shown Stephen Dorff's character's life, which is incredibly boring. You have no idea who he is, what he does (and it ISN'T racing cars), even his full name, what he's doing... There's loads of moments throughout the entire film when he just sits there. Thinking. Being depressed. And i have no idea why! Nothing dramatic happens to make him need to sit back and ponder and for the audience to understand why. Then there's two AWFUL scenes I wouldn't take anyone under 16 to see, of two peroxide-blonde pole-dancing twins shoving their thongs up the camera lens. Thank you for that - just what I came to see. And those two 'sessions' go on each for a whole song's worth. Still feeling positive though, I kept telling myself 'It'll get better and funny when the girl shows up [his daughter]'. She shows up. No improvement. The film is so UTTERLY and badly filmed also - the camera shots are all WRONG, and half the film is spent zoomed in on one person. Seriously, I am NOT exaggerating. Plenty of times Stephen Dorff is sat, with a close up on his head, and he's picking things up, looking at what he's sat/perched on, putting things in his mouth and moving things around, WHICH I CAN'T SEE. I have no idea if it's gum he's putting in his mouth of pills. All we an see is his shoulders upwards. his head is near the bottom of the camera frame. The fact that he keeps randomly (and unexplainably) falling asleep, I'd assume it was pills (for what???). It's so frustrating! Towards the beginning of the film he breaks his wrist, but it's difficult to tell as he fell out of the camera shot, and when the car breaks down, all we get to see it the back of the car... whilst they glance down at the side of it (I guess they got a puncture, but who knows? Perhaps they'd hit one of Santa's reindeer on the way to Alaska, or discovered only now that half the car was painted pink...).

The mother (who we never see anyway) suddenly disappears halfway through, and no one has no idea why but all the characters seem to think that's a normal thing, and then the second half (I'm not even sure which bit I'd class as 'the middle bit') is spent with the father and daughter driving around and getting room service. THAT IS IT. Then she has to go to camp (?), and randomly the Dad is crying alone in his hotel room (?) saying he's 'nobody, not even a person' (?) and then he calls up reception to say he's moving and to pack his items in boxes (?), and then he's driving down a long road (so SO slowly despite the sound effects being of a fast car) and then suddenly he pulls over (?), leaves the keys in his black Ferrari and the key alerter alarm beeping, and slowly continues walking... AND THEN IT ENDS. I was appalled. The ending was more shocking than any other part because I WAS STILL EXPECTING THE STORY!!! I felt like jumping up and yelling to the small audience 'who the hell LIKED this film????' Half of it seemed to be set in Italy, and for some reason there were no subtitles AT ALL for the Italian, and the accents seemed ridiculously fake anyway. The whole film just seemed to be built up of ridiculous, IRRELEVANT, random scenes... such as watching them drive the way to camp... or rather, watching from the camera van the back of the Ferrari driving to camp, or walking into an airport, walking walking walking, then exiting the airport and into a taxi! (perhaps they'd been magically transported by Floo Powder to Italy on their walk through the airport). Scenes of him smoking and picking up a pear (not a gun, A PEAR), or having a mould made of his face. When the characters adding the plasticine to his face said 'it'll take 40 minutes to set' and you're left watching him just sitting there looking like a tortured Mummy which his breathing as the only sound, i thought that I too would have to sit and watch him sit for 40 minutes! And I'm not being thick - I'm all for 'arty' films, but NONE of these 'random' scenes had ANYTHING to do with the film. Not even metaphorically.

Oh. I've just discovered that the director of this also directed Lost In Translation. That was another wildly dull and nothing-happening film. This film was so impersonal, that you couldn't relate to any of the characters when they were down or upset, and it's not as if you'd actually care for the reason anyway! HOW did this get to cinemas??? Maybe tonight I'll watch a film that will never let me down... either Devil wears Prada or Twilight! :)

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