A Week In Film #124: Slow

3:10 To Yuma
Remake of Delmer Dave’s 1957 Western by James Mangold (Cop Land, Walk The Line), based n a story by Elmore Leonard, with Christian Bale a downtrodden, one-legged farmer trying to do the right thing. Russell Crowe is the amoral outlaw he is determined to see onto a train to prison. A little too flashy, and not up there with the classic revisionist Westerns, but efficient.

Step Brothers
Meaningless fun fare from the Judd Apatow stable, directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, The Other Guys etc).

John C Reilly and Will Ferrell as fortysomething idlers forced together when each’s parent (with whom they still live, naturally) get married. Inconsequential, but diverting.

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A Week In Film #123: Vinyl flooring

Dirty
Two dirty cops (Clifton Collins Jnr and Cuba Gooding Jnr) in a dirty anti-gang unit (led by Keith David and Cole Hauser) get up to gangster naughtiness in a dirty city (LA).

Some flashy, arty touches from director Chris Fisher (who was also responsible for the similarly aim-high-deliver-low Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders) and some decent character actors (Robert LaSardo, Wood Harris) aren’t enough to raise the game beyond watchable. It has no coherence, no backbone, and the few flourishes there are just leave you wondering why nobody thought to tone it up at the script stage.

Seems to be trying to bolt on all the guilt/redemption themes and hallucinatory visuals from Take to the Rampart-style cop scandal of Training Day or Street Kings. This definitely does not work.

A Week In Film #122: Copping a feel

Cop Out
Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan are mismatched cops forced to work together to crack an important case, in this comedy-drama directed by Kevin Smith. Not funny.

The Other Guys
Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are mismatched cops forced to work together to crack an important case, in this comedy-drama directed by Adam McKay. Funny.

Underbelly Files: Infiltration
Not as crap as the first film, but rather pedestrian based-on-true-story guff about a driven cop who infiltrates the Calabrian N’Drangheta mafia, yadda x 3.

A Week In Film #121: Pinch, punch

Children Of Men
I know that some people really don’t like Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of PD James’ dystopian near future Christian fable, but I really like it, it packs a visceral punch I’ve not felt with that many films in recent years (Inception aside). It works for me. Gets the cogs grinding.