At the Flix with @Timmy666
Greetings one and all and welcome to this week’s wholesome slice of toasted movie goodness – let’s see what’s exquisite and buttery and what’s burnt and ‘marmitey’ shall we.
Ted 2 (15)
As a Family Guy aficionado, I’m always a firm believer that the best bit of the show’s longevity and wit is its ability to pick its moments of humour objectively, even its gross-out or more vulgar elements. Ted certainly doesn’t do this.
I liked the original Ted in parts! I laughed the requisite number of times that one should hope to and I also recoiled probably as many, if not more, times too! Ted 2 promises much the same with an additional heap of sperm jokes and crude interludes interspersed with a mass of numerous cameos.
Ted sounds like a Southern cross between Brian and Peter Griffin. Many of his affectations have the genesis of Family Guy albeit on a whole other level of what’s considered tasteless – that’s all to be expected. The plot focuses on Ted’s rights alongside those as a human, many of which have a lot of crude sexual situations, naturally.
Let’s face it, a large proportion of the Ted audience are Family Guy fans and I guess we expect more – I suspect it will be a curate’s egg of a film. Yet, I still await a big slab of Seth MacFarlane genius on the big screen.
Dear White People (15)
Of the more unknown releases this week, it’s brilliant to see this on release, Dear White People won the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent. The film is an indie-fuelled, sharply written satire about race during Obama’s presidency and hilariously follows a group of African-American students navigating campus life and racial politics at a predominantly white college.
Love and Mercy (12A)
A moving and unconventional portrait of Brian Wilson starring Paul Dano and John Cusack, both as Wilson! Set to Wilson’s music, the film follows his journey to success and how it came about at huge personal cost. The response to the film has been uniformly positive focussing on star turns from its leads, in particular that of Dano. In a nutshell, all the notes fit and is seen as a fitting tribute to a great artist!
West (15)
Showing at the mac (Mon-Thurs), Christian Schwochow’s late 1970s-set drama is about a young East German woman Nelly (Jördis Triebel) trying to build a new life in the west. For fans of films like The Lives of Others, this film clearly revels in recreating the unease of the time, the surveillance world mixed with the same level of paranoia as a large amount of personal and political intrigue.
Going Clear: Scientology & The Prison Of Belief (15)
With a few showings over the next week at the Electric Cinema, acclaimed documentary maker Alex Gibney turns his attentions to the Church of Scientology, following eight former members of the Church, detailing their experiences and what they do inthe name of religion. Knowing Gibney’s former work, expect the film to be telling as well as entertaining.
That’s it from me this week. As always, if you have comments, I’d be delighted to hear them. Find me on twitter at @timmy666 and let’s continue the conversation.
Auf wiedersehen!
