ChrisC_ATL Reviews

Green Street Hooligans (2005)

overrated

[3/10 · 17 June 2005]

Some mildly interesting insights into the lives (so to speak) of the average young male British sports fan, but the writing is pretty much a series of embarrassing clichés strung together to bind the fight scenes. Poor Elijah Wood, I could almost see him cringing at the lines. The crowd I saw it with loved it though, I'm sure it will be a smash hit.

Oh, I need to type more, apparently. Charles Hunnam does a pretty good job as the lead thug. I'll be happy if I never have to see Claire Forlani on screen ever again except maybe in a makeup ad on TV. All of the other characters were completely two dimensional. Can I go now?

Primer (2004)

Incredible

[13 June 2004]

You remember the first time you saw The Matrix (please, not the awful sequels) and you could barely keep up with what was going on, trying to piece together the pieces of what you were being told into a coherent story?

This movie was exactly like that. The first half or so is fairly linear (despite the frenzied Altman-esque style of everyone talking on top of each other), but then it gets WEIRD and it just absolutely blew me away. This film won a major Sundance award, and normally that means I won't like it (especially the normally pandering audience award winners) but this movie, and first-time filmmaker Shane Carruth, deserves absolutely everything it gets. I am just blown away.

Did you like Pi? If so, go see this one.

By the way, the attention to detail in the beginning is great. Often in thrillers with technical content, if you have a technical education you have consciously ignore all the stupid movie crud that they pull to make it into a good story. But this movie pulls off an incredibly believable technical story, with only a few distracting gaffs. That is, the tech jargon is good enough that you don't get distracted and can focus on the story line.

Final comment: Yes, it is very hard to follow the story line in this movie.

Obviously I'm not going to spoil it, but I think the following fact will help when the movie gets kind of hairy towards the end: Aaron is the dark-haired guy, Abe is the blond-haired guy.

This movie now has distribution and you should keep an eye out for it in the fall.