4-Way Feature: The Descendants, The Adventures of Tintin, Immortals, and Attack the Block

Trying to cross things off my "want to see" list from last year so that I can break out a Top 10 of 2011 list, so here's another time-saving 4-way post with four of those films. More coming soon.

The Descendants
I love that the Dean from Community won an Oscar for co-writing this, although I wouldn't even come close to calling it a comedy in spite of it being advertised as such. It's not that it failed to be funny, it's that it rarely tried, and where it did it was incredibly dry humour, which isn't really my taste anyway. But never mind that, because I really liked it as a family drama. My favourite scenes were the ones involving Matt (Clooney) and his oldest daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley, who is a talented up-and-comer if this performance is any indication of future work from her) investigating the man with whom their wife/mother was having an affair. They played those scenes with just the right amount of curiosity, nervousness, smugness, and anger, and had great chemistry together. I was less interested in the Hawaiian land subplot, but they managed to tie it back in to the family, and it ultimately ended up working as a demonstration of character growth.

The Adventures of Tintin
While watching Tintin, I thought two things: 1) This might be the best looking animated movie I've ever seen, and 2) This is like if Wallace and Gromit starred in Indiana Jones. Truly, the action and adventure are nearly non-stop, and like Gromit, Snowy is potentially smarter than his master except for the fact that he can't speak. It's fun to watch, but I think the one thing holding the movie back is that Tintin as a character isn't that interesting. He doesn't have much of a personality, he's just there to drive the action along and, I suppose, make everyone else in the movie seem cooler by comparison. I was only vaguely aware of the existence of Tintin growing up, so I never got into it and therefore can't say how accurate anything is, but my guess is that Tintin's dog was always more fascinating than he is. But yes, not a bad little adventure flick at all.

Immortals
I'm a fan of the director's other films The Fall and The Cell, so I was looking forward to Immortals. The Greek mythology isn't very accurate, or so I'm told, but if it's all fiction anyway then part of me thinks it doesn't matter. They probably would have been better off inventing new characters, though, instead of using the names from mythology and changing everything else. Anyway, this one's probably closer to 300 than the two films I mentioned above, although it does look fantastic because Tarsem is a director who knows how to construct beautiful visuals. But if it can be possible, I think Immortals is entertaining without being engrossing. I mean the action and story are adequate, but during the climactic scenes I wasn't on the edge of my seat dying to see what happened next. It didn't have the...charisma to pull me in, but I didn't dislike it.

Attack the Block
When I saw the trailer, I thought it looked kind of cool, but at the same time I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. It turned out to be loads and loads of fun. It may seem like a comedy because Nick Frost is in it, but it's more of an action/horror/sci-fi with a few throw-away one-liners, which I didn't particularly find hilarious but it didn't get in the way of my enjoyment. Attack the Block can be likened to a more adult version of The Goonies or Super 8, as it follows a gang of teens and kids who stumble onto something bigger than they can handle, leading to one wild night of action and adventure. But there is an interesting aspect of redemption thrown in, too; when the movie opens, they're assaulting and robbing a woman, but then aliens attack, and the gang members become the heroes by saving that same woman's life, and suddenly we find ourselves liking these guys. They may be thugs, but they still know we're all part of the human race.