Every Sunday, Gill delves into his archive of over 800 movie reviews and randomly selects three for your enjoyment! Here are this week’s…
The Informant!
Steven Soderbergh’s weirdly upbeat semi- parody of whistleblower movies like The Insider is enjoyably silly and imbued with a quirky sixties vibe, but overall I was left a bit baffled by it. Matt Damon is great as Mark Whitacre, an over zealous pathological exaggerator, and the bits of his inner monologue that we hear are very funny – even though it reveals that the protagonist is totally nuts, and therefore difficult to relate to. The Informant! is a difficult movie to classify, but if I had to recommend it, I would say that if you enjoyed The Coen Bros. Burn After Reading, you’ll probably enjoy this too.
3.25 out of 5
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
By far the best of the National Lampoon Vacation movies, Christmas Vacation is also a really fun Christmas flick. It’s goofy slapstick taken to a ludicrous degree, but the film also manages to capture the holiday spirit while simultaneously mocking it. I’m pretty biased on this one because I watched it evy Christmas when I was a kid, but I do think the comedy here, however dumb, is far funnier than more recent comedies like The Hangover.
3.75 out of 5
Neverland
This SyFy mini-series re-imagining of the Peter Pan mythos is well cast, with Rhys Ifans playing the young Captain Hook, Kiera Knightley as the voice of Tinkerbell, and Bob Hoskins reprising his role as Smee, but retconning Peter Pan’s origins so that he was actually Oliver Twist to Hook’s Fagan just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Add to that the fact that there are magic orbs that teleport people to Neverland, created by an alchemist, and the crocodiles have eight legs, and you have a recipe for disaster. This is weird, science fiction fantasy stuff and really bears only a mild resemblance to what he appealing side of the Peter Pan story.
2.25 out of 5
See you next Sunday for three more thrilling short reviews!