How far would you go for money?

Would You Rather (2012)

Hello film fans! Here I am, back with another review! I just want to say, before we get started, that the above posted/dvd cover isn't the one that shows up on Netflix, it is rather, a close up of an eye with a razor blade, lip-pursingly close to it. I prefer that one to the above one as it is less fussy and far more inviting that the busy poster above.

Anyway, without further ado. Would You Rather is a sort of Ronseal job (does what it says on the tin). There is a woman, Iris (Brittany Snow) whose brother Raleigh (isn't that a kind of bike?! Played by Logan Miller) is dying of some terrible disease. The film opens with her desperately trying to find a job to help pay the debt left by their dead parents as well as the mounting medical bills. Needless to say, she's unsuccessful, and has had to drop out of collage to take care of Raleigh.

For some unfathomable reason, one of her brother's doctors invites Iris to meet with a man called Shep (Jeffrey Combs) who tells Iris of a 'game' that he hosts once a year, the winner receives all the help they require for whatever problems they have in their life, be it bad health, drugs, debt, or in Iris' case, her debt and medical bills. Oh and a transplant that her brother desperately needs lest he die.

For even more unfathomable reasons, Iris asks NO questions as to the nature of this 'game'. The doctor and Shep are infuriatingly vague about giving any details and talk like politicians, beating around the bush and never saying anything useful.

So of course, Iris goes. Not before spinning some lie to her brother that will have consequences later on in the film. Anyway, a car comes to pick her up and she arrives and begins talking with a couple of the other 'contestants'. All together there are 8 people, Iris, the token black guy, kick-ass Dave, can't-take-a-beating-Bob, gambling-fat-man, wheelchair-bound-biddy, stick-up-her-ass-goth-chick and alcoholic-Jim. 

As they are all sitting around eating dinner, Iris informs her host she is veggie when she is served steak and foie-gras. Shep says he'll pay her $10'000 to eat the meat. Which she does, and let the carnage begin.

Just to cut a long story short, alcoholic-Jim is the first to die, after swallowing an entire decanter of whiskey he kicks off and is shot by the butler-assassin. can't-take-a-beating-Bob literally gets beaten to death with a fancy whipping stick. He got preferential treatment for saying something insulting to Shep's son, Julian (who is a complete tool, far too interested in the sicker side of the game. I really hoped to see him get his just desserts, which he does to an extent but nowhere near what he deserved).

Token black guy gets shot during the groups first, and only, attempt at escape. Wheelchair-bound-biddy gets stabbed in the leg with an ice-pick by gambling-fat-man who tears open her artery and she bleeds to death. Gambling fat man has a quarter stick duct-taped to his hand which he is forced to light himself, resulting in a few less fingers and a heart attack that sees him off. 

At this point, they're all having to choose between holding their breath in a barrel full of water for 2 minutes or opting for the punishments in their envelopes. Needless to say gambling-fat-man went for what was behind door number two and lost a hand. Iris chooses the barrel and makes it out alive. Kick-ass Dave opts for envelope and has to slice open his eye with a razor blade which he manages with a second to spare before being shot by the staff.

Stick-up-her-ass-goth-chick, who has been a real pleasure to deal with up to this point (she stabbed Iris in the side, electrocuted at least two people and was the favourite to win) chooses the envelope. We learn her husband drowned their baby (but surprisingly this is ALL we know about her) her envelope? 4 minutes underwater. Just as she's taking a huge gulp of air, her head is thrust into the water meaning she lasts about 30 seconds before drowning.

It's down to Iris and kick-ass Dave. Would You Rather shoot Dave while he's in the middle of telling you his heartbreaking story? Or would your rather escap....oh no you shot Dave.

Hurrah, you.....win?! Anyway, beaten, bloody and looking like a melancholy panda, Iris takes her dufflebag full of cash along with promises of the desired organs before the end of the following week and returns home. 

I won't spoil the very end, but if you have half a brain you've probably figured it out. It is my opinion that this film had great potential, it is reminiscent of Cabin in the Woods, and Killing Room. It just missed out on so much more, yes it had tension, and the bloke who played Shep the crazy millionaire wasn't a bad actor but on the whole most of the characters lacked any depth and the plot was predictable for the most part. Still it wasn't the worst film I've ever seen and if you like a tense plot it's worth a watch.

It scores a middle of the road 5/10

Until next time, film fans. 

Netflix - Greatest invention in the history of the world? Or destroyer of lives?

Yes yes, I realise that the title to this blog seems somewhat ominous, but bear with me here. I have a point I promise. And I'm sorry that this isn't a movie review. I don't really know why I'm considering apologising to you (whoever you are) about the time gaps in my entries to this blog. The reasons I don't keep it up to date are numerous, but essentially boil down to laziness. I won't lie, I pick you up and drop you when I'm bored, blog. Also, sometimes I prefer to bathe in the after-glow of a good film rather than dissect it. 

Finally, there's Netflix. This, personally speaking, is a perfectly acceptable excuse for not posting as often as I perhaps feel I should be doing.

Hard to believe that Netflix is approaching its 15th birthday, and like most teenagers, it sucks your money sometimes offering lots in return and other times demanding you spend hours looking through its filthy room for dirty washing and finding porn mags with its pages stuck together and the distinct aroma of illegal narcotics.

And this is why Netflix is either the most wonderful invention the world has ever seen, or indeed the very downfall of humanity. Of course, I'm not saying that Netflix will single-handedly bring about the apocalypse. Still, if it does, you can say you heard it here first. Feel free to take it to the bank and cash in that cheque, and all the while you can call me Psychic McJones.

No. Total apocalypse aside, I am merely referring to the film industry and people's perception of what 'good' is with regards to films. As an avid film-watcher, recent graduate in the field and possibly a highly trumped-up ego, I feel I have enough experience of how the industry works to pass judgement on people's viewing habits.

OK, allow me if you will, to take you back about 23 years. It's 1991, and I am a chubby 7 year old who knows all the words to Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. I'm sure there were other videos (ah yes, videos, who remembers those?!) but back in those days, videos were EXPENSIVE and so you watched them until your favourite scenes sounded like they'd been recorded in the cinema using your uncle Dave's crappy half-ton camcorder and a couple of cups on string for sound. The rewind button on the video player was permanently pressed-in and a remote control was the stuff of dreams, that only really really rich people had.

What is the point of this silly flashback I hear you cry, hopefully on a packed train where those who aren't lost in the world of noise-cancelling Beats (or whatever the crap those oh-so-popular headphones are called) will turn and look at you with an expression that says 'crazy hipster loony'. Yes, yes I take pleasure in making people feel embarrassed, so kill me. 

Well, anyway, the point is this. Way back when videos were expensive, they were also precious. You watched and watched them, usually until they were totally destroyed. Even if you rented one for the evening you would watch it from start to finish. If you were anything like me, you even sat through all the trailers at the beginning of the film.

It was the same with trips to the cinema. I can count on one hand the number of new releases I saw in the cinema between the ages of 0 and 15. Mostly, I would visit a local cinema that showed black and white silent moves day and night in the basement and blockbusters several years after their release in the upstairs screen. Even then you'd barely see change out of £5 for a family & snacks. It later transpired that the man who owned the cinema went down for murder and that old cinema since been converted into flats (true story, look it up!).

Now, and this is important, I'm not a technophobe! I've grown up surrounded by computers like the rest of you (well, most of you at least). Granted when I first started using computers, floppy discs were indeed floppy, and my first experience of Apple wasn't anything exciting. Like so many others I'd likely be lost without my all-singing all-dancing smart phone. And YES I do have a Netflix subscription and have/have had subscriptions to Love Film, Blockbusters, Tesco Film and Film4OD. I have a modest collection of about 450 DVDs and Wish Lists for more on Amazon, eBay and IMDb. IMDb is also one of my most used web pages and I happen to think it is absolutely wonderfully marvellous! 

No, I'm not discrediting technology. YES we are wholly dependent on something that can (and most likely eventually will) crash and send us spiralling into a global panic, or worse, turn on us and enslave us with the very technology we created. But I'm not saying that it's so terrible that if you're lost (and as long as you're in a free Wi-Fi area) you can find your way. It can save lives, save time and save money if you know what you're doing.

But the huge advances in technology that have brought us streaming content at the click of a button has soured our love for film, and also driven the wedge between humanity that many times deeper. For example, do you know the names of your neighbours? When commuting to work, do you sit with headphones on or do you perhaps converse with your fellow commuters. Have you almost run over someone who's walked into the road, too busy looking at their phone to look where they're going? Perhaps you've narrowly avoided a crash with another driver who's talking on their phone? Do you know people who are thousands of pounds in debt simply because they 'had' to have the most recent iPhone (other smart phones are available). Well, this is because technology means we can talk to friends we haven't seen since high school, we can email every company in the world and go about our day to day business without actually saying a single word, face to face, with another human being.

Unfortunately, to try and bring back the days of face-to-face conversation is to grasp idly at straws. The future leaders of our world are all Bieber-loving Facebook-addicted loons with strange shaped texting-thumbs. By the time these people come into power, I hope to be living entirely off the grid, with 12 boxes of DVDs I can't watch any more. Love it or hate it, just like Bieber, technology is not only here to stay, but will seep deeper and deeper into humanity until we're living in a world that's a cross between Surrogates and 1984. 

Well, this blog entry took an unexpected dark turn. Sorry, it's relevant. I'm going to get to my point now, as I have a stack of 5 DVDs to get through before the end of tomorrow that I'd like to blog about. So, technology has given birth to a new way to consume film. And herein lies the problem. Unlike those heady days of 1991, where films were made to be watched from start to finish, and were so, over and over. Today Netflix allows us the luxury of half-watching thousands of films.

Gone are the days of watching something so many times that you can recount word for word the entire script. Your need for the 'perfect' film is an insatiable urge, it forces you to rate films you've seen to give you an idea of ones you may like. I too am guilty of starting a film with no real intention of seeing it until the end. If it isn't satisfying my need for romance, horror, gore, or perfection, I will simply cease watching and move onto the next vaguely interesting sounding film.

Where once up a time was the beginning of 90 minutes of childish wonder and awe, it is now a precursor to a half-eaten pie, a vague attempt at finding that nugget of gold in a sea of half-baked comedies and you drawing the conclusion that if you've seen one cop car chase, you've seen them all. 

But, and here's the kicker, why would you actually leave the comfort of your Ikea Skonor (or whatever) sofa (that you bought on line BTW using your FindMyPerfectSofa app) to go to the dying breed that is HMV (other stores are available - oh yeah, sorry, no they're not. Who remembers Our Sound? Exactly!) and spend £2 on a DVD, or goodness forbid £14.99 on a new release when you could watch the ENTIRE box set of Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Daria, Jonathan Creek (I could go on) by simply opening another tab in your screen, leaving this blog as just another memory of the outside world and pay £5.99 a month for all-you-can-eat entertainment? What was I talking about again? I've just seen that a programme I used to watch as a child is on Netflix...I used to love this show.....

Until next time, film fans.

Aberzombie and Fitch!

Detention of the Dead (2012)

Scroll down to the bottom of this review if you want a TL:DR version. 

What to say about this film? Well it scored a poultry 4.2 on the IMDb site, and I'd have to say it isn't far from the truth. Zombie films are a dime a dozen these days just like vampire and werewolf films. But as a genre it's about as popular as Burberry and just as annoying. Still, credit to those who continue to make them as it's nigh on impossible to come up with a new and original way to portray the living dead. 

Sadly, this film doesn't break the mould in any conventional way, the acting leaves little to the imagination and the over-used social classes that make up the cliché American high school are prevalent  The testosterone fuelled jock, the alpha male, the pot-head, the head cheerleader, the nerd and the Goth girl make up this cast and none of them are likely to be adding an Oscar to their mantles any time soon. 

With little explanation, the zombie virus breaks out during detention, the place where our cast convenes. For some inexplicable reason they quickly figure out what's happening, but when their teacher gets bitten and they decide to head to the library they take her with them. Eventually she gets decapitated by the pot-head using a guillotine. 

It's about here that I realised this film is little more than a re-hashing of The Breakfast Club but brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century and shoved into a school full of flesh eating ghouls. 

I imagine it'll come as little suprise to learn about the love square that's going on here. The cheerleader is in a relationship with the alpha (they were caught doing questionable things in the bathroom that landed them detention) but the nerd (who was taking performance enhancing drugs - can someone say irony? - to make sure he got into Harvard and was caught by the now decapitated English teacher) is totally in love with the cheerleader. But all along the Goth chick is in love with the nerd. And the pot-head? Well he's too high and preoccupied with playing with his teacher's decapitated head to even think of getting it up.

Like many horror films of this genre, you can predict those who are going to survive, by now we've lost testosterone-fuelled jock to an errant zombie no one knew was in the library, and alpha got a tiny nip on the end of his finger that sees him slowly begin to turn. As the cast are having heart-t0-hearts (if you can call them that), I wondered if alpha would perhaps sacrifice himself, but no, instead he decides along with Goth chick and pot-head that they're off on a jaunt to try and escape.

But no! Cheerleader doesn't want to leave so nerd stays behind, much to the chargrin of the Goth girl. While they navigate the vents (original or WHAT?!) Cheerleader and Nerd have an awkward conversation where you see him put his heart on the line and her vapid responses that would have most foaming at the mouth at just how vacant some people can be simply turn him on even more. Kissing ensues.

Meanwhile, in the vents, Goth chick, pot-head and alpha come across a zombie rat (I know, but you can't make this shit up!) and after some too-ing and fro-ing and some frantic backwards shuffling they tumble from the vent and pot-head realises he's left his stash up in the vent. Most sane people would just run for it, but he doesn't and of course he's consumed entirely safe for his legs by the rats. Luckily alpha and Goth chick use his severed limbs to fight their way back to the library and manage to successfully cock block the nerd who's about to lose his virginity to the virgin cheerleader. 

Realising they zombies now know exactly where they are and they've got to do something unless they want to become a midnight snack for their once-classmates they make something akin to Dead Reckoning (from Planet Terror), well if it had been made by an armless leper. So out they come on pot-head's long-board  English teacher's head on a spike at the front and fight their way using the gun nerd was going to do himself in with, an American flag pole (how patriotic!) and Cheerleader gets throwing stars from somewhere. It takes them mere seconds to destroy it and soon they're once again fighting against the hoard with anything and everything that comes to hand from a gun to pencils, a baseball bat, a knife Goth chick had in her oh so cliché Dr Martens to a clarinet. 

Nerd tells them he'll hold them off (FFS it's the apocalypse, don't be a hero!) while they run through the gym to the roof. They gym is teeming with the zombies but somehow Goth chick and Cheerleader make it to the ladder but of course the blonde bimbo gets bitten on her ankle. With one bullet left, and Goth girl about to do what she's no doubt dreamt of since grade school Nerd busts through the hatch onto the roof. Zombies don't jump, but they can climb, they empty the last bullet into his brain but here comes Zombie-alpha. Yeah, you guessed it, blondie side-tackles him off the roof and queue Nerdy-Gothy kissing and oh look here come the army! 

Overall it was fairly predictable and very strange in places, the roof filming looked totally different to the indoor shots and the only person with an even remotely believable character was Nerd but even he was too good looking to be a real nerd. It also wasn't the worst film I've ever seen, and it was entertaining enough for a Saturday afternoon when I didn't want to have to think hard about what I was seeing.

It gets a paltry 4.9/10

TL:DR : Imagine if the Breakfast Club was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and if there were zombies.....

The vast fortune that cannot stretch to a watch!

Django Unchained (2013).

If you're a Tarantino-phile I suggest you exit this review now. K, thanks.

Now don't get me wrong, I like Tarantino's films as much as the next person. I saw the line up, Christopher Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx, throw in some spurs and people spitting tobacco and wielding awesome Stetsons and sawn off shotguns and you have the makings of a great cowboy film, no?

NO.

Now before you try to shoot me down, allow me to explain. This film is approximately two hours and forty minutes long. "There's nothing wrong with that woman, Titanic is longer! The final LOTR film is even longer stil!!!" I hear you yell at your monitor. Yes, I know, but those films had REASON to be as long as they were. An hour of this film is just, nothing, a black hole of banter, Tarantino's self-indulgent need to have a cameo in his own film and dragging out what is an obvious story line.

Imagine if Punisher, Taken, Taken 2, Law Abiding Citizen, Leon, Wanted and Machete (ok well maybe not Machete since it's already kinda there) were all set in Cowboy times and you have the story of Django (who I cannot stop calling Duhjango). A black man, sold into slavery trudging through woodlands meets Dr King Shultz who buys (ok shoots everyone) his freedom in return for leading him to a bunch of wanted criminals.

Django, who's shackled and on his way to hard labour until death and clearly has nothing better to do accepts and is made a free man, the rest of the slaves are left with a half crushed white man and a shotgun, doesn't take a genius to work out what happens next.

Here would have been the perfect point for a montage. Of course Django wants to kill every cracker is a 50 mile radius and Shultz agrees that they will go find his wife after all the killin's done. Broomhilda von Shaft, is a german speaking woman who lives with Calvin Candie (DiCaprio) and following a Star Wars style explanation and MISSISSIPPI in massive letters scrolls across the screen (if you weren't aware of being in the middle of a Tarantino special before, you are now) we follow Shultz and Django as they cook up a scheme to get them into Candie's home and out with Broomhilda.

Buuuuuut, does it ever work out that way? Out of nowhere the infuriating character called Stephen (played by a very very old looking Samuel L Jackson) accuses Broomhilda of knowing Django, and sneakily tells Candie who comes back into the room and preeceeds to butcher a black man's skull and talk about dimples in the bone.

Here would have been a great place for the film to end with a spectacular gun fight, and one does occur with Shultz killing Candie, only to get blown to smithereens himself. CUE ANOTHER HOUR OF SOMETHING.

Literally, an hour later Django gets his revenge, and after taking Broomhilda's signed freedom papers FINALLY blows up the Candie house and all those inside, and rides off into the sun- OH NOPE MY MISTAKE, rather he entertains his ladyfriend by MAKING HIS HORSE DO A FUCKING DANCE. Seriously.

When the credits rolled at the end of this film, I doubt I've ever felt gladness like it. I personally would like to thank Tarantino for raping me for an hour of my time. The film had a perfectly good story line, some amazing acting talent, some great gun fights and banter but it was JUST. SO. LONG! 

If you love film as much as I do, and finding a great film is less likely than winning the jackpot, you'll appreciate that a film that just drags on for the sake of screen time is like being jabbed in the eye repeatedly by angry crows, not enjoyable. Also, the soundtrack was all over the place, there was classical, music that sounded like it had come from a crappy 70s cop TV show and hip hop, it was like the barrel of crappy music has well and truly been scraped clean.

I probably will watch it again, but only when someone either gives it to me as a present or it's in the bargain bin for 99p. I'm just glad I didn't spend money to go see this in the cinema as I would have ended up in a sugar coma from eating ice cream and popcorn just to stay awake. I imagine those in the cinema either wet themselves or died of hunger/thirst and those who were lucky enough to survive probably smelt worse than a rotting corpse in the Sahara desert. 

A massive drain on time. 4/10.

R and Julie, another retelling of the classic?

Warm Bodies (2013)

I decided to rent this on a whim the other night having seen the intro to it during my last visit to the cinema months before it was released. I wasn't expecting much, I've had a bit of a zombie overload over the last few weeks what with The Last of Us (which was AMAZING), then watching World War Z in the cinema the other day (also pretty darn good). That and I've seen so many zombie films I struggle to see how it could possibly be told from a new angle and still be interesting.

That said, Warm Bodies does just that. It's reminiscent of the new fashion for making fashionable, up to date films. Nick & Norah, Juno, Scott Pilgrim etc etc etc, you get the picture. It works, it's hip, this film is definitely down with the kids, albeit dead kids. There's little back story into the apocalypse only that it has been 8 years since the first recorded case and of course it takes no time for most of the globe to become shuffling, brain munching, grey-faced weirdos. Pretty much the collective populous of teens at present, then. 

The film follows the story of R (pronounced Aaaarrrrrrr - like a pirate only less Johnny Depp) and his unusual zombie life, he cannot remember his name, or how he came to be a walking corpse. His thoughts are coherent and often funny with a dry wit, and he has groaning conversations with his zombud Marcus. One day he and his homies stumble upon Julie and her weird BF Perry and their friends. Chaos breaks out and R ends up munching Perry before laying eyes on Julie and well you can imagine the rest. 

R rescues Julie from the remaining zombies and takes her bad to his pad, an aeroplane on the abandoned runway of some nondescript airport. We learn R likes good music and collects stuff he finds on his shuffly travels. Cue montage of them getting to know each other.

We learn of the 'bonies' what zombies become when they give up, imagine an anorexic Skeletor and you're most of the way there. Eventually it becomes clear that the love is the answer and the zombies begin to revert to their human forms, this seems to anger the bonies significantly and so they start amassing towards the city. R, who has at this point admitted he killed Julie's ex decided he must find a way of telling the humans that the zombies are reverting and heads for the city followed by his zombuds and the bonies.

Does this film have a happy ending? Well what it does have is a balcony, which holds a Julie with a waiting R underneath, I hope that it was a happy accident as it's cheesey as hell but there we go, it's a love story first and the zombie apocalypse second.

Overall it was a good film in my opinion, and Nicholas Hoult does make a hot zombie. Will definitely be purchasing this film, but only when it's in the 2 for £10 at HMV.

7/10.

I'm not Forrest Gump you know!

Title: Adam
Date: 2009


Now I don't know much about the autistic spectrum, and I can't say it really featured all that much in life for me.  That was until I read 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' by Mark Haddon. I won't ruin the story, because I think it's one of those books that aught to be in the top ten of any 'books to read before you die' lists. 


If you're someone who tends to judge a book by its cover (we've all done it!), then you'll glean little from this one, even the description on the back does little justice to the overall film. As the title suggests, our protagonist is Adam. He's 29, and up until six weeks ago, lived in a neat and tidy little world with his father in the big city. The film opens in his father's funeral, as Adam tries to come to terms with having to fend for himself, we the viewers begin to learn of his little nuances, All Bran for breakfast and then Mac&Cheese and broccoli for dinner, every single day.


He scribbles 'dad's chores' from the rota on the fridge, a move which I found particularly poignant, after-all, to Adam this is just fact. He picks up the broom and takes on-board his father's duties as simply as if he were putting on a tie. There is an overlying feeling of melancholy throughout this film, you fall in love with Adam, who is played by Hugh Dancy, so well in fact that the storyline draws you in, and holds you there until the very last second, and you're left with a quite sense of peace as the credits roll and the music plays.


But getting back to the film, we meet Beth. She's a little like Adam in her own way. Having recently come out of a messy breakup, she meets Adam in the laundry room of the building they share. A little scatterbrained, but quietly curious she accepts Adam as he is, and when she learns of his Aspergers syndrome simply takes it in her stride. Both Adam and Beth help draw each other our of their shells as the story progresses. One evening, Adam tells Beth he has something to show her, and takes her to Grand Central park, where he shows her two raccoons living in the bushes. As Beth is a writer this inspires her to write a story about the raccoons.


There is occasional narration during the film, by both Adam and Beth, which helps to give an insight into what they're thinking. I wonder if this is because neither of them will ever know what the other one is thinking, and this is an ongoing issue for Beth, the one piece of narration that really gets me is right at the beginning, where Beth says:


"My favourite children's book is about a little prince who came to Earth from a distant asteroid. He meets a pilot whose plane has crashed in the desert. The little prince teaches the pilot many things, but mainly about love. My father always told me I was like the little prince, but, after I met Adam, I realised I was the pilot all along."

I think we're all the prince, and the pilot. To our parents perhaps we teach them about a different kind of love. But then when you go out into the world, and you meet someone special or have children of your own you realise that it is your turn to be the pilot.

Although never conventional, their relationship has a certain innocence to it, when she is sad after learning her father has to stand trial for something we never really come to understand, she has to explain to Adam that hugging is considered the norm when your other half is sad. This is another endearing part of the film.

Not far into the film, Adam is sadly fired from his job working as an electric engineer at a toy company, and while looking for another job, Beth pretends to be the interviewer so Adam can understand the process and learn to interact as NT's would (neurotypicals, or people without Aspergers). At the same time Adam is offered a job on the otherside of the country, Beth's father is found guilty and sent to jail for two years. Unable to give her an answer when she asks him why he wants her to move to California with him, Adam is forced to do something terrifying and move out alone.

The film fast-forwards a whole year and we see Adam delivering a tour to some very bored looking school-children and talking about telescopes and how a large image of space is made up of lots of smaller images from multiple scopes. He stops himself from talking too much, a residual part of Beth's teachings from earlier in the film. When a colleague tells him that he has a package, he offers to help her carry the boxes, another mirror from the beginning of the film as Beth struggled up the steps to the apartment with heavy groceries and is ignored by Adam.

Finally, on opening the package it is a book entitled 'Adam' written by Beth about a family of raccoons living in Grand Central park and the film ends.

I quite simply love this film, the only downside that I can find is that the Americans pronounce Aspergers like Ass Burgers, which is quite distracting!

9/10.

It all started with a butt-squeeze!

Management (2008)

Dubbed as a 'touching' comedy, this quirky little piece of cinematic joy sees travelling art-saleswoman Sue (Jennifer Aniston) drop in the Kingman motel to stay. She gets a little more than she bargained for in the shape of Mike (Steve Zahn), the nerdy and needy night-manager of his parent's motel. One look (and touch!) of her behind sees him determined to get the girl.

Awkwardness ensues as Mike tries to impress the lady, turning up at his door with a bottle of cheap wine and the excuse 'all our customers get a bottle of wine', when that fails, he turns up with a bottle of champagne and Sue lets him touch her butt to get him out of his hair. The next day as Sue is leaving, she changes her mind and returns to a rather glum looking Mike in the laundry room where they proceed to have a bit of a lacklustre romp.

Assuming she's seen the last of him, Sue leaves. But a holiday romance is the last thing on Mike's mind as he makes the first of three journeys cross country to see Sue. Mike lands in Baltimore and surprises Sue at work who kindly allows him to stay. We begin to see more of Sue, she likes women's indoor football (I know, I'm rolling my eyes too), and handing out vouchers for Burger King food to the local homeless people. After a little while Mike gets on a bus and leaves Sue once more, I should add here that kudos to Steve Zahn, he can do the hang dog look like no one else I know. Sad as it may be, I just wanted to give him a massive hug. While in Baltimore, Sue tells Mike he should quit smoking, so he turns and throws his cigarette away quite dramatically, and says 'I just did'.

Back at home, he returns to the grind of the night shift and who should turn up unnexpectedly, on his fag break? Yep. She says 'I thought you quit smoking?' Mike drop kicks his ciggy (seriously, it was possibly the funniest part of the film!) and says 'I just did.' He asks Sue to join him at a yoga class, and then to visit his mother with him as she is sick. A strange but compelling conversation between strangers Sue and Trish (Margo Martindale) who tells Mike later to go out and find what makes him happy.

Shortly after Sue's latest departure, Trish sadly passes away, we never learn what's wrong with her, but there's a touching father/son scene as they scatter her ashes. Jerry (Fred Ward) tells his son that he's free to leave, and Mike is off again, not before pawning his mother's necklace that his father had passed on, so he could afford to once more head cross country after his love.

It's around this time that Mike picks up his Asian buddy and wingman Al (James Hiroyuki Liao), who's probably the funniest character in the film. With his help Mike gets a job and a place to stay while he looks for Sue. It turns out that she got back with her ex, Jango (Woody Harrleson), so what does Mike do? Yeah, you got it! He parachutes into their swimming pool, gets shot byt Jango with a BB gun and ends up in hospital only to get spurned once more by the leather-hearted Sue.

But then it's clear that as a glutton for punishment, he isn't going to give up easily. Not even after getting head-butted by Jango, who has a dog-wielding meat-cake air-headed side-kick in tow. Even after a beautiful serenade by Mike and Al (on percussion), Sue is still having none of it and visits Mike in his basement at the Chinese restaurant to tell him she's marrying Jango and is with child, and no it isn't Mikes. 'I want someone who's in control of their life' Sue tells him, in anger Mike screams at her to leave.

Standing in the sidelines, Mike and Al watch Sue marry Jango on the beach. As as joke, Al says 'makes you want to become a Buddhist monk.' Which unsurprisingly, Mike takes seriously. Four months later he returns to the motel and his father who hands him the deeds. He decides to turn the motel into homeless shelter with midnight basketball, something Sue had mentioned always wanting to do. He calls Jango to try and speak with Sue, but he is informed that they are no longer together and that Sue is living with her mother.

For the third, and final time Mike travels across the country, and finally he gets his happy ending, but we all knew that was coming, didn't we?

All in all, it wasn't spectacular, but I enjoyed the film because of Steve Zahn's performance, he was a very convincing and loveable stalker who has the best puppy-eyes anyone could have. It's a 'nice' film, that's easy to watch and makes you smile at the end.

7/10