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Ok so I normally never review films. Mostly I just give general well I sort of liked it or it was interesting comments. But I decided, given that I have seen three films recently that are all very different, that I should give it a try. So cut for Spoilers.

Hard Candy Billed as a thought provoking film it does just that. With a list of actors that can be counted on one hand, there was little to distract you from the character play of Hayley, underage and seemingly naïve, and Jeff, the possibly but you're not certain dodgy guy.
What starts as a "man picks up girl for nefarious deeds" turns on its head when Hayley drugs Jeff and proceeds to torture him in an effort to make him 'confess'.
As she is increasingly cruel, culminating in a castration scene that made my male companions feel a little queasy, you feel a strange mixture of sympathy and disgust for Jeff. You are not sure if you should feel sorry for a man who has done what Hayley claims he has. Hayley herself is not a wholly sympathetic character, you feel sorry for her as she deals out her 'punishment' but there is a creeping horror that she is willing to take things so far.
Though her motivation is never explained the film as a whole was, well, enjoyable might not be the right word, but worth going to see.


The Lake House. A romantic saga with not so much of the romance. Thus it was described to me by someone who had already seen it. So it was with some trepidation that I went to watch this latest outing by Sandra Bullock.
A slow film that moves along at its own pace, the romance that underlies the characters actions is understated but believable. The film starts with a doctor leaving the house she has lived in for a year and placing a letter in the post box for the next occupant. However the letter is received by an architect two years earlier. The two start a correspondence sharing just the letters and a dog as they try to make their lives connect.
On the whole it was a nice film that, if not approached with too much of an idea in mind flows well. The only thing we discussed on leaving the cinema was the relative strangeness of the past/future alterations going on and their relative impact on the doctor's memories and actions. That and how it all worked, I blame the alien/time travelling dog. All that said worth a look though some might find Il Mare, the Korean original, better. (This reviewer also commented on the time travel thing :P )

Ultraviolet and not the TV series. So third film, third genre. Sci-fi with the opening line “Hello. My name is Violet and I was born into a world you may not understand”
Thus starts a film that is, well, tricky to tell where it will end, or even when. We follow Violet as she steals a container only to find it has a boy in it, and then chooses to risk everything keeping the boy safe; for what I can only assume is some motherly instinct left over from the apparent miscarriage that she had at beginning of plot. As well as the need to use the boy as a means of finding a cure to her vampire like state.
Motivation of the characters is unclear and sometimes obscured as Violet keeps running and faces ever greater odds. Always being told "you'll never make it" and cheerfully replying "Watch me."
The cinematography was strange; the smoothness of the skin making it look like the entire thing was CGI instead of just the finish on live shots. The fight scenes however were well made and slick if somewhat brief. The battle on the top of a building with a group of men firing bullets at Violet as she ducks and weaves making them kill each other, was one of my preferred ones.
But all of them seemed a little easy for our heroine, who deals with all comers as if on a stroll in the park. Example follows one of the few memorable quotes of the film.
"How can you hope to defeat us? We're as strong as you..." "...we're as fast as you... "
Violet: "...but are you one-tenth as *pissed off* as I am?"
She is facing two long haired Hemophages (the technical term for these modern vampires) and defeats them in under 10 seconds. Moral of the story – Don’t enter a fight with long hair, Violet is a hair puller.
And through this all I remember the text my friend wrote while watching the trailer.
"They made her stronger, they made her faster, and they made her wear a dodgy wig."
A diverting film but not on the top of my recommendations for a DVD night.
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shazrasha

August 2010

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