‘The King’s Speech’, Tom Hooper, 2011

STARRING: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham-Carter, Guy Pearce

TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 58 mins

I START WATCHING FROM: 59 mins

Things ‘begin’ with an argument. A seriously posh argument. Colin Firth and Guy Pearce – both doing cut-glass ‘ears’ instead of ‘yes’ upper-class accents – seem to disagree about Hitler. Guy mentions that ‘Hitler will sort them out’. Not sure who he’s talking about, but I’m already guessing that we’re not supposed to be on his side. Supporting Hitler is something of an empathy-killer in the old movie-narrative game, I find.

Guy stops arguing about Hitler and looks for a bottle of wine. Colin decides to argue about something else. This is interesting – during the brief time I’ve been working on these ‘reviews’, I’d estimate that about 90% of movie scenes consist of people arguing. I know, I know, conflict is the essence of story and all that, but sometimes you have to wonder why we all can’t just get along? I for one would like to see ‘Switzerland: The Movie’, an uneventful, somewhat neutral epic in which everyone agrees to differ for three hours.

‘And you put that woman in our mother’s suite!’ Colin yells, angrily. Time for a bit of detective work. Colin plays King George VI, who famously had to overcome his stutter in order to deliver stirring speeches. As he’s talking about ‘our mother’, I’m gonna guess that Guy is playing his brother King Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne following his decision to marry Wallis Simpson.

Oh yeah. I didn’t even need to google that shit. See that? That’s historical knowledge right there, bitches. (Although if you do want to expand your horizons online, it’s worth nothing that Ms. Simpson was a bit of a hottie).

Guy then talks about his plans to marry a commoner in a laboured bit of expo, which allows me to feel smug for a brief moment (not something which happens often). They carry on arguing about ‘duty’ and ‘privileges’ and ‘the approval of the Church’. Only a minute in and I’m starting to zone out. See, this is the problem I have with these sort of films – it’s always really, really, really hard to relate to the ‘problems’ of rich people. You wouldn’t be rooting so hard for Charlie Chaplin in The Little Tramp if he was called Ollie, was born in Kensington, went skiing every few months with his private school chums and insisted his ‘job’ was running a fucking drum and bass night or something.

Anyway.

Guy then teases Colin about his stutter. I kind of hope Colin will yell ‘shove it up your arse, Guy, at least I wasn’t in Neighbours‘, but that would probably break the fourth wall slightly. Guy then wanders into a party full of more rich people. Colin looks a bit unsettled … and then we cut to him with his therapist, played by Geoffrey Rush.

Isn’t Helena Bonham Carter supposed to be in this film? I want to see Helena Bonham Carter.

The whole therapist/King relationship is kind of odd – a bit like Tony Soprano and Dr Melfi had been rewritten by Evelyn Waugh (note to self: shit, son, keep dropping those high-brow references and you’ll have a guest-writing slot on Pitchfork in no time). Unfortunately The Sopranos also had bullets and guns and the mafia, whereas this has aristocrats saying ‘bugger orf’ in funny voices. I can only conclude one thing …

I STOP WATCHING AT: 1 hour, 2 mins

VERDICT: ‘THE KING’S SPEECH’ HAS OFFICIALLY FAILED THE ‘COMING IN HALFWAY’ TEST!

‘Black Swan’, Darren Aronofsky, 2010

STARRING: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel

TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 48 mins

I START WATCHING FROM: 54 mins

‘Oh,’ a random ballerina says as Natalie Portman walks into the dressing room, ‘look who’s decided to grace us with their presence.’ Two things are clear now: a) that this is a rather prescient first line to hear as one starts to watch a film halfway through, and b) that the other ballerinas don’t seem to like Natalie Portman much. Not sure why – she seems like a pleasant girl to me.

Natalie wants a word with Mila Kunis, the chick who does Meg’s voice in Family Guy, a great actress whose career has been overshadowed by people yelling ‘holy shit – she’s the chick who does Meg’s voice in Family Guy?’ on a perpetual basis. Natalie and Mila get all pouty and argue about something that happened last night. They both look quite gaunt and thin here, as do all the other girls. (Note: I’ve actually heard talk about how this movie is irresponsible, because it ‘promotes unrealistic body shapes to young women.’ These people might be missing the point somewhat, in that criticising a ballet film for featuring skinny girls is like criticising Conan The Barbarian for featuring bodybuilders. The girls in this film are skinny and gaunt because that’s what ballerinas fucking well look like. Christ, you wonder if such ‘cultural commentators’ can ever just leave their half-arsed, sixth-form-sociology-dropout, OMG-I-understand-issues horseshit aside for just one second of their pointless lives.)

Ahem.

Next scene. Natalie sits on a subway train, at which point a nearby old man stares at her and licks his lips. Not sure if he’s done this to her before. Maybe this is just part of her daily commute. Not entirely fair, as whevever I try that sort of thing I get arrested. The old man starts to blow kisses and simulate masturbation, a bit like Leslie Grantham in that old webcam video.

Natalie is now at home, sitting with a woman who – I guess – is her mother. This suspicion is soon confirmed when the older woman mentions that she ‘gave up her career’ to give birth to Natalie. Looks like Nat’s old lady was a ballet dancer too. God, nepotism is just rife in the creative industries, isn’t it?

‘How’s your skin?’ the mother asks, rather creepily. She then orders Natalie to take off her shirt, which is ironically what I was shouting to Mila Kunis a couple of scenes ago. Natalie refuses. I wonder – what is wrong with her skin? A horrible thought: there isn’t going to be some horrible, heavy-handed psychological ‘twist’ wherein she imagines herself growing Swan Wings, is there? Please say it ain’t so. *

Mila turns up, and she and Natalie decide to go out and get wasted. Mum doesn’t like this, but, like, she’s totally not the boss of Natalie, and shit. Natalie and Mila take some drugs and then try to seduce two boys who look like background extras from a mid-90s episode of Beverley Hills 90210. Natalie talks about Swan Lake, the ballet she is presently rehearsing. One of the boys pretends to be interested in what she is saying. They start to dance to some EDGY music while epilepsy-unfriendly lights strobe across the scene.

Natalie and Mila get a taxi home. Natalie argues with her mum. Hmmm. I’m perilously close to stopping watching – this is all starting to seem like a well-shot episode of Hollyoaks. Not sure if it’s worth persevering with, to be hones—

—holy shit, is that a Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis lesbian sex scene? It is. It really is.

Mila’s shoulderblades begin to oscillate freakishly for some reason, and then her face turns into Natalie’s face. Guess this is all symbolic of madness, or something. Still: a Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis lesbian sex scene, people.

Natalie wakes up, hungover, and gets to work late. Mila is dancing around. Natalie looks upset. They argue again. Natalie looks upset again. She goes home. Lies down. Looks upset again. Throws some things around. Looks upset again. By this point I’m starting to look upset too, and I’m more or less content to declare this one over.

Christ, if only I’d been ‘reviewing’ Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, I could have finished by saying ‘ding-ding-ding-ding’. Or is that more of a boxing reference? Oh, I don’t know.

I STOP WATCHING AT: 1 hour, 13 mins

VERDICT: ‘BLACK SWAN’ HAS OFFICIALLY FAILED THE ‘COMING IN HALFWAY’ TEST!

*Since writing this ‘review’ I have watched the movie in full, and – while my prediction was right – to my surprise Aronofsky actually pulls this motif off quite well. Infact, the whole thing is really rather good. How about that?

’127 Hours’, Danny Boyle, 2010

STARRING: James Franco

TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 34 mins

I START WATCHING FROM: 47 mins

We kick off (halfway through) with footage filmed through a consumer-standard video camera. Hmmm. I’m guessing this is an intentional device related to the plot. Well, either that or that the global recession is really taking its toll on Hollywood. Can we expect Boyle’s next production to be shot using a mobile phone camera and slapped together using Windows Movie Maker? To be fair, it’d probably get a write-up in Dazed And Confused calling it ‘the next generation of D.I.Y post-technological user-generated mind-cinema’ or some bollocks like that.

Anyway, the footage shows a middle-aged couple, and then a little girl playing the piano. A boy with glasses is filming her. ‘Go away’, she hisses. Yeah, that’s the reaction I always get too.

Hold on – isn’t this a film about that climber bloke who hacked off his arm with a penknife after getting trapped beneath a rock? Where’s James Franco, the climber bloke himself? Where’s this rock? I’ve been watching this for 20 seconds now, and … oh, there he is. This is all a memory/dream sequence. He’s remembering all this from his impromptu camping spot halfway down the side of a crevice. ‘Way to go, sis,’ he mumbles. Ah – so the girl at the piano is his sister. Just call me Sherlock.

It’s hot. Baking hot. I’ve no idea how long poor James has been trapped here, but he can’t be all that comfortable. Plus he’s got his sister’s piano music going through his head, which must get annoying after a while. Not as annoying as, say, anything by The Vaccines or The Drums or whatever bunch of wankers the NME has pinned to the front cover this week, but still pretty disheartening.

James looks around. Sips his water. Thinks a bit. Yep – his arm is still trapped under a rock. He spills his water, which is kind of a stupid move.

Now … now he’s remembering something else. Some kids are in a car in the middle of the snow, music playing, all of them taking off their clothes. That’s horrible: not only is he going to die in the Arizona wilderness, but now he has an episode of Skins polluting his brain. Some girl whispers ‘I love you’ to him. All very nice, yeah, but … really … shouldn’t he be trying to get that rock off his arm? That would be my priority, to be honest, rather than indulging in a quick session of memory-theatre.

James is distracted when an ant crawls on his arm. Not very impressed with this performance from his supporting cast, he kills it. And then …

Oh, for Christ’s sake, he’s remembering something else now. He’s lying in bed with a girl. She talks about how she can gain the ‘combination to his heart’. Rather than immediately pegging her as a stalker and running away, he lies and stares adoringly. It’s that sort of reckless attitude that led to him getting trapped under a rock in the first place, I bet. The girl grabs his cock and James wakes up again. Typical – always happens at the best bit of the dream, doesn’t it?

Uh oh! It’s started to rain! In a film which consists primarily of a) a man and b) a rock, I assume that this functions as an action setpiece. Maybe I’ve missed a couple of killer scenes so far featuring wind and drizzle. It starts to rain more heavily … until James is engulfed in water. And then – the rock slips away! He’s free! He swims to freedom!

Now, even though I’ve only started watching from halfway through, I’m aware of the true story upon which this film is based. Climber Aron Ralston was stuck under a rock for 127 hours, until he finally bit the bullet and chopped his own arm off in a bid to escape. So: there’s either an upcoming plot twist in which James gets trapped underneath another rock (which would be a real pisser of a bad day) or … yes … it’s yet another dream sequence.

It’s the latter. Obviously. James ends up driving to safety and knocks on someone’s front door in the middle of the rain, at which point he wakes up again and – yep, he’s still trapped under the rock. I’m starting to sense a pattern in this narrative. James has a bit of a daydream, pretends that his arm isn’t mangled underneath a boulder and that he’s going to die, and then snaps out of it to find that he does infact have a mangled arm trapped beneath a boulder, and is infact going to die.

It’s all a bit repetitive, really. So much so, infact, that I’m not even going to stick around for the amputation scene. Oh well – maybe if I’d watched this from the start I’d have a bit more emotional investment in the characters, and this would be a genuinely gripping story of survival.

But then that would defeat the whole point of this website, wouldn’t it? I mean, duh.

I STOP WATCHING AT: 55 mins

VERDICT: ‘127 HOURS’ HAS OFFICIALLY FAILED THE ‘COMING IN HALFWAY’ TEST!

‘Revolutionary Road’, Sam Mendes, 2008

STARRING: Kate Winslet, Leonardo Dicaprio

TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 54 mins

I START WATCHING FROM:  57 mins

Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet are sat on a beach somewhere. Clothes and hairstyles seem a bit old-fashioned. Maybe this is the fifties. Someone calls Leo ‘Frank’ – I’m guessing that must either be a) the name of his character, or b) an accusation that he’s extremely forthright with his opinions. I think I’m going to settle for a).

Leo begins to chat about his work as a salesman, while Kate sits quietly, all the while appearing to simmer with the barely repressed sexuality of a post-war-era housewife. This gets my attention, although I can’t help but ruminate on the fact that if I’d started watching Titanic from the halfway point, I’d be up to the bit where she takes her clothes off. To date, I’m convinced that scene is the sole reason James Cameron has evaded murder so long. He may have criminally wasted three hours of our lives with Avatar, sure, but lest we forget that he projected Naked Kate onto a million teenage consciousnesses. Bless him.

Anyway – Leo is sitting with some buddies. He mentions the fact that he’s making lots of money. Kate looks shocked. Slow zoom in (she’s so shocked that it merits a slow zoom, people). She gets up and walks away. She sure ain’t happy with Leo. Maybe he’s been lying to her throughout the first hour – pretending to be poor, for some reason. Mind you, boasting of your financial success  would be a pretty feeble way of letting the secret slip, wouldn’t it? Sort of like Ted Bundy saying ‘man, you wouldn’t believe the hot chick I gutted last night.’

Leo and Kate spend a moment together. “I thought you turned the job down,” she seethes. Aaah, right – so she doesn’t like what he does for a living. If I had any idea what that happened to be, the dramatic impetus of this scene would probably be a little weightier. As such, it’s like sitting on a bus and listening to a bickering couple argue about their tax benefits. You’ve just got to be invested in the dilemma, you know?

Leo mentions something about people from Paris being interesting – nope, I’m lost – and Kate tells him that he’s wasting his life “in a job he finds ridiculous.” Oh – so Leo hates his job too. God knows what he does as a form of employment, but – from the sound of things – his job must suck balls like a broken lottery machine. Maybe he works in Argos. No-one should have to work in Argos, not in a civilised society.

Leo storms into the sea, looking moody. Infact, everyone seems to look moody in this film, all the time. Even the extras are scowling. The next scene shows them both at home … arguing. Again. Jesus Christ, how did these two even get married in the first place? “I support you!” Leo yells. “I pay for this house!” I can’t decide if this is a film, or if I’ve suddenly discovered a DVD-shaped portal through which to spy on the couple who live in the flat above me. They’re always yelling this kind of shit too.

“It takes backbone to lead the kind of life you want,” Kate smoulders. See that? That’s a trailer line. Right there. Just like that bit in Seven where Brad Pitt looks terrified and whispers “have you ever seen anything like this in your life?”. I love trailer lines. Someone should make an entire movie out of them – no plot, just continual melodrama-fuelled outbursts. (Or Monster’s Ball, as I believe its called).

“I’m going to go use the bathroom,” Leo says. Seriously? Do we really need that particular nugget of exposition? How about: “I’m going to scratch my arse”, or “I’m holding in a killer fart right now”? Leo stares at some towels. He spots a rubber tube. The rubber tube makes him angry. He really must not like rubber tubes. He walks back to the other room, approaches Kate, and …

… they start arguing. Again.

I think I’m done here.

I STOP WATCHING AT: 1 hour, 1 mins

VERDICT: ‘REVOLUTIONARY ROAD’ HAS OFFICIALLY FAILED THE ‘COMING IN HALFWAY’ TEST!

‘American Gangster’, Ridley Scott, 2007

STARRING: Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington

TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 2 hours, 30 mins

I START WATCHING FROM: 1 hour, 15 mins

We start with Russell Crowe and some men, all watching Muhammed Ali on an old-fashioned television. This is the sixties, then, I guess. Or maybe the seventies, and they’re watching some old footage. I can’t really tell. Russell Crowe looks upset about something. Maybe the fact that he starred in A Beautiful Mind. God, that was rubbish. And I actually watched that from the beginning.

Denzil Washington then proposes to some woman. They’re in what looks like a lavish hotel room. No, wait – I think it’s their house. It’s really nice. The woman dances around in a fur coat. Hmmm … what’s the betting that this extravagant lifestyle is the result of some gangsterly crime-mischief, and that Russell Crowe isn’t best pleased about it? Maybe Washington has committed a few awful crimes by now. I wouldn’t know.

So Denzil goes to a boxing match, and Russell takes some pictures of him. Russell Crowe – whoever he’s playing here – means business, as in the next scene he’s wearing a leather jacket. Then Denzil gets married. Seeing that he only proposed a moment ago, I’m guessing this is a pretty fast-paced film. Will it sustain my interest, however? Time will tell.

“Frank,” some guy with a moustache says. Ah. Denzil is called Frank. I feel like I know him better now.

Russell Crowe is making plans for something. Some guy has an afro – this is definitely the 70s. They start following Denzil to some clubs. I think Denzil deals dope. Maybe.

Whoever Frank/Denzil is, he’s a powerful man. Why? Because music starts to play, exactly in tandem with his entrance to a club. That spells authority, motherfucker. He argues with a man about some drugs.

Denzil is caught by the cops but they let him go for some reason. Russell Crowe goes to see an old buddy, and they smoke cigarettes and talk about their families. Crowe has decided to comb his hair for this encounter. I don’t know why.

Just realised that everyone smokes in this film. Everyone.

Russell Crowe runs down an alleyway, pulls a gun on some man, and then argues with him. He then goes to a courtroom and starts whispering to some woman. She mentions that he once hired some strippers. I wish some strippers would appear now, as I literally have no idea what is happening.

Russell Crowe just stares at the woman. I think they were married, maybe? That this is a divorce hearing? Oh, I don’t know. I’m bored now. I can only come to the following conclusion:

I STOP WATCHING AT: 1 hour, 40 mins

VERDICT: ‘AMERICAN GANGSTER’ HAS OFFICIALLY FAILED THE ‘COMING IN HALFWAY’ TEST!