Tuesday 31 July 2012

This Means War, The Amazing Spiderman and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

A lack of decent movies this week encouraged me once again to try this weeks offering in Senior Screen. This Means War was a strange choice for me and my fellow seniors. In the end a rather flimsy action comedy that could have been better if the cast of Chris Pine, Tom Hardy and Reese Witherspoon had been swapped for ... almost anybody.

The casting for The Amazing Spiderman was spot on. If it had not been for Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, it may just have not worked so well. A decent story and crisp dialogue help director Marc Webb (following his terrific (500) Days of Summer) to create, for once, an endearing superhero movie.

Still short on intelligent movies, it being the school holidays, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World seemed the only option. Steve Carell and Keira Knightly are an unusually matched couple, but it is the nature of their different characters that make the film quite cute and engaging. Written and directed by Lorene Scafaria ( just the fact that she wrote Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist would have got me to see this, her next movie) it just shows that you have to applaud a one woman venture that is a proper story and does not have any special effects. Whilst there are definitely flaws in the final result (not funny enough and too much of the tired road trip formulae) there are some nice cameos and a decent song list. There is also one moment with Martin Sheen towards the end that is such an emotional tug, it was worth watching just for that alone.

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