Antoine Fuqua's 2001 corrupt-cop-thriller is another film which has earned its place on the #ICBIHS list, as have many others, by virtue of people recommending it to me over the course of several years, but which I've never got round to investigating since it looked to me like a bog-standard late-night BBC1 thriller movie.
And once again I'm slightly disheartened to say that my initial assessment was apparently correct. Training Day is 'a good film', but I found little special about it. I imagine this is because the film was making genuine cinematic strides in 2001, and has paved the way for countless imitators. The problem is that I've seen a hell of a lot of the imitators before watching the original, and while the film-making itself stands the test of time, it does so as an archival piece.
It also doesn't help that writer David Ayer leads the screenplay with two deeply unlikeable characters (one is fine, but both?), surrounded by deeply unlikeable associates. It really is difficult to want the protagonist to succeed when you'd happily see him murdered by street gangs, if only to stop him whining for the rest of the film.
But Denzel Washington gives a performance with more energy than I've seen from him in recent years, and Ethan Hawke holds his own against DW's scene-stealing. Fuqua is a sturdy director, but Ayer's writing was more focussed in End Of Watch. It's just a shame everyone's fine efforts didn't combine to make something more long-lasting.
I wanted to enjoy Training Day more, but the film wouldn't let me.
And not in a cool, challenging way.
Nope, really not.
Glad I can tell people 'yes, I've seen it', if that counts.
I wouldn't not recommend it.
Not that I heard.
Denzel Washington starred in 1993's cinematic adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, as did Brian 'Boss Nass' Blessed.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Scary Movie 5 Cert: 15 / 86 mins / Dir. Malcolm D. Lee
It's hard to imagine anyone making a comedy film which is outshone by the EE/Kevin Bacon ad*1 that precedes it, but messrs Lee and Zucker have done it! It's not 'offensive', it's not 'gross-out', it's not 'risky', it's just not funny. I know, I know, that's entirely subjective. There were a handful of people in the audience that found it highly amusing, to the point where they were giggling and guffawing through the parts which aren't meant to have jokes (such as the setups and weak links between the appalling sketches). I didn't find the film funny, but even I could tell where the laughs were supposed to be. Although interestingly, the audience I was with left during the gag-reel which intersperses the credits. After a whopping 75ish minutes, they were already sick of the film and left at the earliest opportunity (not that the gag-reel is any better or worse than the rest of the film).
Cycling haphazardly between the plots of Mama, Black Swan and Rise of the Planet of the Apes*2, this is an old joke, badly told. That this has been made doesn't surprise me (sadly), but the fact that this has been distributed to cinemas, in 2013, will baffle me to my dying day. The Weinsteins are old enough to fucking well know better. As is every single person who appears on-screen. A script that might have come across as self-referential on paper seems to be acted out by people who have Saturday Night Live as their high-watermark when it comes to performance comedy.
But at least I wasn't disappointed by it, in that it's exactly as awful as I'd feared from that trailer. Hey, at least they didn't make it in 3D, right?
Oh, yes..
Mainly just crying. Inside.
Not a fucking clue.
Never see this, ever.
That's putting it mildly.
I fucking hope not.
No.
*1 And not the first one, which had a level of originality at least, but the second one (which the internet doesn't seem to have), which uses the same jokes to massively diminishing returns.
*2 That's right, two of those three aren't horror films. I know this is nothing new for the "Scary" Movie franchise, but they could at least pretend they're trying.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
