I haven’t written about many films I have seen recently, but then I haven’t seen many good ones. Fargo is one of those films I have been meaning to see for ages, made worse by the films I have seen instead (Knocked up, Die Hard 4.0 etc etc).

Without spoiling anything for those of you that haven’t seen it, Fargo is set in the middle of nowhere (Upper Midwest United States) and centers around a car salesman (William H. Macy), who tries to scam his rich farther in law by staging the kidnapping of his daughter (Macy’s wife).

Apart from the fascinating dialogue, accents and characters I loved the way the film flowed. Rather than keeping you guessing about ridiculous twists the film is predictable in a refreshing way. The fact that there is no silly twist is almost a twist in it’s self.

I don’t want to spoil anything else, but there is another aspect of the film that is very unique and really quite cool. Definitely recommended.

At the weekend we went to see hot fuzz after being slightly surprised we managed to get tickets. I spent the first half of the film questioning each line as to it’s quote-a-bility, and thinking how it may not live up to the hype. But after a while I settled in and started to enjoy it a lot more.

There were defiantly some classic lines, over the top gore and great action (including a flying kick to the face of an old lady) and lots of familiar faces (Bill Bailey, Adam Buxton, Steve Coogan, Timothy Dalton, Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy to name a few).

I expect I will see it a few more times over the next few months, so will let you know how it improves with every watch, but first impressions are great!

Tonight we went to see A Scanner Darkly at the Clapham Picture house. After being talked into joining the members club (and subsequently being £45 less off, but with some free tickets or something, expect more reviews soon) and purchasing some sweet popcorn, which interestingly isn’t sold in north america, in fact they only have salted and add cheese and BBQ flavored sprinkles to them! Nutters.

Anyway we watched the film which was, to be honest, really confusing but implemented a really cool cell shading type thing which made the actors look like cartoon characters and if you blurred your eyes it sorted of looked real.

It was all about drugs and a big brother state, and stuff which was interesting and may make more sense you read the book it was based on (of the same name).

IMDB gave it a 7.5 which was nice, I think I would give it about 7, OK but not great.

I watched a few films over the weekend and one of them was Inside man, which to my knowledge hasn’t had a UK cinema release yet.

Therefore I wasn’t expecting much, and my only interest was based on the few TV adverts I had seen when I was in Canada earlier in the year.

However it turned out to be a really good film with a good performance from Clive Owen and Denzel Washington, and well worth a watch for those of you that like a good heist flick. It was also really well directed by Spike Lee and had some great cinematography.

IMDB rating of 7.5/10

Lucky number sleven

The other film I saw was Licky number sleven, only after I persuaded the others not to watch 4 weddings on Film 4!!!

The film had a great cast and performances from Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu and of course Sir Ben Kingsley!

Anyway it was one of those films that is hard to describe without ruining it, however I though it was very clever and had some great dialogue.

IMDB rating of 7.6/10