Review No.40: The Raven

So this weekend was the birthday of a very good friend of mine and we had planned a trip to the cinema without a specific film in mind. After weighing up the options we decided on The Raven based on the fact that together we were either fans of John Cusack or period drama. For those unaware of the story it sees Cusack play gothic author who is drafted in to help the police when a murderer starts using parts of his grizzly stories to bump off people. When his beloved Emily is kidnapped by the killer Poe must work alongside Detective Fields to find the killer which involves a lot of running around, shouting and getting to the scenes of murders too late to do anything. Meanwhile we do discover that Emily is being kept in a coffin somewhere but we never find out where so its a bit of a race against time in 19th century Baltimore with some gruesome stuff to satisfy the torture porn fanatics.

It's interesting talking about a film with a group of friends after the fact as the general consensus was that The Raven was rubbish but thankfully I didn't agree. Instead I would describe it as just a bit silly with some very hammy and overblown performances and a murder mystery plot that fizzles out with the final revelation. The thing that nobody could argue was that Cusack was great as the drunken penniless Poe who wanted more recognition that he was getting in his native Baltimore and despairing at the fact that he couldn't even get a review published in the local paper. His pursuit of Alice Eve's Emily at the fury of her father was also amusing if not completely believable as the scenes between Eve and Cusack didn't sizzle with screen chemistry and indeed Poe seemed to lavish more affection towards his pet raccoon than he did to Emily. There were some good set pieces such as Emily's kidnapping at her father's masquerade ball and the pursuit of a suspect during a performance of Macbeth. Outside of Cusack however only Brendan Gleason makes a decent job of giving some life to his character with his screen daughter Eve essentially playing the damsel in distress. However it is Luke Evans who goes completely over-the-top constantly shouting for various items and looking frustrated when he doesn't get his own way essentially seeming like a petulant child rather than an authoritative police captain. I could almost imagine watching The Raven on the TV on a rainy weekend afternoon, that is if you removed the gore and swearing, it is very silly but likeable and never boring with a lead who knows what he's doing. Sure the revelation is anti-climactic after all that has come before but those with a love of a good trashy murder mystery story will enjoy this just don't go into the cinema expecting a realistic portrayal of Edgar Allen Poe's life as you will likely be disappointed.

Verdict: Despite what my friends say this wasn't an awful film instead a trashy, hammy murder mystery that I would recommend renting on DVD and when you do you may agree with my rating of 6.5/10

Review No.18: The Decoy Bride

The thing with this blog is that I would watch films that I probably wouldn't have picked otherwise, Mercenaries is a case in point, and just like that film The Decoy Bride seems like a movie that would go straight to DVD. Maybe it's because it has some big names in there with David Tennant and Alice Eve playing a couple who are about to get married but she is constantly hounded by the press as she is one of the world's most famous actresses. To dissuade the paparazzi they travel to a small Hebiedean island which Tennant's author James previously wrote about although it turns out that he googled all of his research and never actually went there despite this book being what Lara fell in love with in in the first place. Lara's 'people', played by Ugly Betty's Michael Urie and screenwriter Sally Phillips, have to put together the dream castle that she imagined from the book but even then the press arrive so these two pick a local girl to become her decoy but surprise surprise these two end up married instead. This girl is Katie a girl whose returned to the island following a unsuccessful career on the mainland working on an online trouser magazine and finds herself the only unmarried female in a world with no young men left. You can then really make your own mind and join the dots to what happens next but the film does include a scene in which two deaf people dance to Tennant playing the bagpipes badly.

If that above scene is something you've always wanted to see then The Decoy Bride might be for you if not then there's very little going on here. This is by no means a bad film but the best compliment I can lavish upon it is that it is quite easy-going and uncomplicated. The thing I couldn't get past is that the two central characters are fairly unlikeable Katie is self-loathing and unmotivated while not very attentive to her dying mother while James has written a best-selling book by plagiarising most of his material. In fact the most likeable of the three leads is Eve's Lara who isn't the spoilt movie-star but rather a caring, poetic girl who helps one of the islanders live out her dream in fact The Decoy Bride would be better if James was escaping a woman who wasn't very likeable rather than this charming saint-like beautiful actress. The best parts are the comic agents played by Phillips and Urie the latter playing an approximation of his character Mark from Ugly Betty these two get all the asides and his campy nature lends itself well to a film that is fairly slow elsewhere. There is a lot of wasted talent though both James Fleet and Dylan Moran aren't on screen long enough and the natives of the island are all clichéd oddballs. So a romance between two characters who deserve each other and a comedy that made me smile but never laugh and I'm sure this is meant to be a great British romcom.

Verdict: For an average uncomplicated romcom it gets a standard 4/10