Review: Moon (2009)

This is another film that’s been sat in a ‘recommended’ list for so long I forgot why it was there in the first place. After watching it the other night, I suspect it was recommended to me after reviewing Interstellar, or maybe even Gravity, but that’s just a guess! As I write this now the UK is going through an insufferable heat wave, and with hindsight, maybe watching a mind-boggling sci-fi whilst melting in my living room was the wrong thing to do.

Moon is a clever little sci-fi film set in the future, where mankind has discovered an alternative fuel source found on the moon, helium-3. Sam (Sam Rockwell) is the sole employee at a lunar station on the moon, where we manges the machines responsible for harvesting the helium-3 from the moon’s surface. As his 3 year contract comes to an end and he looks forward to coming back home to earth, he is injured in an accident.

I think that’s all I can really tell you without spoiling anything. If you’re thinking about watching Moon, I promise to keep this spoiler free for you! Also, you must forgive the sloppy review.Sci-fi is not my forte, and ‘space stuff’ tends to go right over my head. For example, there’s a robot in Moon called GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), that I’m told is a nod to a robot in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I haven’t seen that...maybe that’ll be one for the Blind Spot list next year.

Speaking of GERTY though, he was delightful. He has a little monitor with an emotion-style face which ranges from a grin to crying, which tells us how he’s feeling at any time. Does he feel? Does he have AI? I’m not sure! He does have a ‘kick me’ sign on his back though, which made me chuckle.

It was nice to see Sam Rockwell in such a serious role. I’ve only seen him in comedies so far and I really do think he’s a good actor. There’s a particular scene which really stuck with me where he has a complete breakdown, and it was so moving. He nailed it! The music as well was brilliant, and straight from the start it gave me a feeling that things weren’t going to be happy fun times.

So, as much as I’ve praised Moon, something still doesn’t sit right with me. Sam didn’t freak out as much as I thought he should have done at a certain revelation, and the twist kind of wasn’t a twist, either. I don’t know? It’s hard to explain, but nothing really shocked me in this. It was enjoyable for sure, but I didn’t love it as much as I perhaps should have done. Absolutely worth a watch though!

Review: Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)

As much as I enjoy a good mind-bending thriller or a jaw-dropping action film, there are times when I just need to watch a comedy. I don’t like having just 1 favourite film of any type, but if I had to pick my favourite comedy, it would be Horrible Bosses. Nick, Kurt and Dale have cheered me up after many a bad day at work, and I was both excited and nervous about seeing Horrible Bosses 2. The sequel is never as good as the original, right?

If you saw the original Horrible Bosses, you’ll know that the trio (Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day) finally rid themselves of their awful superiors. Well now, they’ve decided to become their own bosses and create their own company, selling a product they invented, the Shower Buddy. They find an investor (Christoph Waltz) who puts in an initial order of 100,000 units, but then he rips off their product and cancels, putting the guys’ company in jeopardy. To save their business, they decide to kidnap the investors son (Chris Pine) and hold him to ransom.

Putting aside the silly plot and the brilliant one-liners, what I love the most about Horrible Bosses is the chemistry between the 3 main guys. It’s all so real and they bounce off each other so well, I can’t help but smile no matter what they’re saying. None of them is the main star here, they all have equal parts to play and they shine together. As much as I love Chris Pine, I wondered how he would fit into the cast but he played a fantastic ‘bad guy’. Think of Kirk from Star Trek in the bar, but a little more over the top, and that’s how he is in this.

You can expect the crude humour that Bateman, Sudeikis and Day spout throughout the film, but some of Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston’s lines made me cry with laughter. They’re just not the kinds of things you can imagine them saying, and the gag reel in the credits proved how difficult it was for them to keep straight faces at time. Really, the cast as a whole were equally brilliant.

Some of my favourite moments were the Sharpie marker incidents, the foolproof ‘plan’ the trio put together, and the support group scene, but honestly, I loved it all. If I were to give any criticism, it would be that the plot was just too predictable, although that didn’t really take anything away from it for me because although I worked out what would happen, there were still little details I wasn’t expecting, and plenty of laughs to distract me.

Honestly, I don’t think I could rate the two Horrible Bosses films now. I’d have to go back and watch the first again, but right now I rank them together, and highly! I know this film isn’t for anybody, but it’s just my cup of tea.

Review: The Usual Suspects (1995)

Last night was our first official Flick Chicks get together! It's also been 4 weeks exactly since we created this blog. Exciting times! We had 2 films planned to watch, but due to a technical hitch and general chit chat, we only had time to watch 1. We chose wisely and went with a film near the top of the IMDB Top 250 list, The Usual Suspects.  Actually 'last night' was quite a while ago, but as usual I have delayed the publishing of this post!! I know, I know i'm terrible, but i always have the best intentions to 'add to this one on my lunch break' or 'type that up after work' which generally gets overrun by food or...no usually food!!  Anyway, back to it, quite pleased to be reviewing a film on the IMDB Top 250 list, if only to test out whether the hyperlinks work!! ;-)

Films are much more enjoyable when watched with company, and we had a great time watching this. I think Jenna will agree with me though that the first half an hour or so was really difficult to follow. We were both sat in front of the TV a little like this:

That was exactly my face to be fair!! We got our heads around it all in the end! Don't ask me to recall all of the main characters names though...

I think we felt a tad disappointed that we both worked out what the plot twist would be. We literally both had a lightbulb moment at exactly the same time! (I still think it was really obvious!) That said though, we both knew that this film had a massive plot twist, which is what made it so popular, so we spent the whole film trying to work out what it might be.  I did find it difficult to follow and to be honest if the ending hadn't been so good, I might have enjoyed this film a lot less! I think it is one of those films that is only good because of the ending, when you can go back and re-watch the whole film just to see if you missed any clues.  Although, not so much in this case as Allie mentioned we both had our lightbulb moments and clocked the twist very early on.  I was surprised actually because I asked my Dad who watched it years ago if he figured it out and he said he had no idea (and he's REALLY smart!!)

I get the feeling that Bryan Singer is going to be using a lot of these plot upon plot, twists, turns and confusion in my most anticipated film of the year X-Men: Days of Future Past.  Watching this has only made me want to see it more, to see what plot twists might come about.  Adding in the time travel element, my brain might actually explode ;-)

Even though we knew it was coming, the ending was fantastic. It actually made us laugh out loud! I'm really glad we watched this. Fully agree, plus very much enjoyed checking out the trivia on IMDB and rewinding (how very old fashioned of me!) the film to spot them, I think this will come to be a Flick Chicks tradition!  I wanted to give this a 9 but I think by losing grip of the plot in the early parts of the film, I lost a certain level of interest in the ending!