Death Proof - 2.5/5
OK - I'm not a big Tarantino fan to start with and this is clearly not his best work. Some of the dialogue is entertaining enough, but not up to the usual standards. I'm not totally sure I buy into the idea of deliberately making a big budget movie look cheap and nasty. Kurt Russell makes an entertainingly chilling bad guy as Stuntman Mike. The first crash is really unnecessarily gruesome and unpleasant, but things improve in the second half when the girls turn the tables on the bad guy and the film moves into similar territory to Spielberg's Duel. The only problem is its then bringing to mind films like Duel which do it much better. Oh, and kiwi stuntwoman Zoe Bell gives an extremely wooden performance as herself. Not recommended unless you're a big Tarantino fan.
Disturbia - 3/5
A teen remake of Hitchcock classic Rear Window with Jame
s Stewart's broken leg replaced by Shia LaBeouf's house arrest electronic tag to keep the hero housebound whilst suspecting his neighbour's a murderer. This is not the worst idea put forward ever and Shia Labeouf, after Transformers, again proves a very watchable leading man whilst David Morse can now do the chilling psychopath thing in his sleep. The move to suburbia loses the closed in claustrophobic feel of Hitchcock's masterpiece and director DJ Caruso handles it competently but along very much seen-it-all-before genre lines - the hero closes the fridge door to find the killer standing there in his kitchen, etc... Its a watchable thriller, but the idea and the original deserve better handling.
s Stewart's broken leg replaced by Shia LaBeouf's house arrest electronic tag to keep the hero housebound whilst suspecting his neighbour's a murderer. This is not the worst idea put forward ever and Shia Labeouf, after Transformers, again proves a very watchable leading man whilst David Morse can now do the chilling psychopath thing in his sleep. The move to suburbia loses the closed in claustrophobic feel of Hitchcock's masterpiece and director DJ Caruso handles it competently but along very much seen-it-all-before genre lines - the hero closes the fridge door to find the killer standing there in his kitchen, etc... Its a watchable thriller, but the idea and the original deserve better handling.Evening - 2.5/5
This is very much a case of feel the quality of the actresses - Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson (Redgrave's real-life daughter playing her on-screen daughter), Mamie Gummer (Streep's daughter playing her younger self) and Eileen Atkins. With such a talented cast the results could never be truly dreadful, but where the film aims for The Hours, it falls some way short of The Notebook. Where it aims for stirring passion it manages gentle sentiment. And surprisingly all these talented actresses are upstaged by Hugh Dancy as the unrequited lover who drink too much and enlivens proceedings whenever he's on screen.
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