Powder Film Review - Teenage Electric Daydreams

Powder (1995)

We’ve all been there at some point. No matter how hard you try, you don’t fit in. You don’t know why. There’s something that you can’t put your finger on between you and ‘them’. Whether the ‘them’ are your parents, your friends, the people you went to school with, the streets where you live. You feel different, almost like you’re a different species to those around you, and you wish you didn’t. There is nothing you wouldn’t give to fit in like the rest of them. To not feel on edge, to look at people and see something that resembles what you are like in them. To be normal. The kicker is that it feels more acute when you’re young. 

On paper, Powder [DVD] initially appears to be a straightforward coming of age drama. A reclusive young man is pulled out into the world and thrust into the small town spotlight. There are a small few who recognise him for what he is, something special. To the majority he’s the weirdo.

The Weekend Watch Film - Spartan

David, David, David fracking Mamet. I used to love Mamet, really love Mamet, but David and I have fallen out in recent times. Not because of his change in politics, and his sweeping generalisations about people with non-conservative views. Each to their own. A human being can change it's opinion on the world can't it? No crime there. The reason that Me & Mamet haven't been on speaking terms for a little while is the sheer lack of...oomph in his work recently. Where's the life gone? This is a man who wrote 'Three Uses of the Knife', a book about drama that has more passion in it than most drama scripts, but someone who seems to have gone off the boil and turned his back on the power of his best work. Thing is, I can't quite let him go. So this weekend we're watching Spartan (2004) with the hope the some of the Mamet vitality will return. There's a great looking cast with Val Kilmer, Derek Luke and William H. Macy and it's written and directed by Mamet after all, so it could, it could be good...

If you fancy braving it with us, then take a look at Spartan and let us know what you think. Do you still have faith?

Please be good.

The Short Short Film Review - Forgive

Forgive (2008)

Families, they're supposed to be the rock upon which we stand, but sometimes it can feel like quicksand.

Even when we become adults our parents can still feel like giants. Like there's a part of the brain that still sees them through the eyes of the five year old that you once were. You may see their frailties, you may be taller, faster and stronger now, but they still have the ability to tower over you.

Boy Wonder Review – Broken Revenge

Boy Wonder (2010)

What would you do? If as a young child you saw your Mother killed in a car-jacking, what would you do? Would you try and come to turns with it? Would you attempt to rebuild your life, never forget her, but over the years at least try and arrive at some kind of peace? Or, as is the want these days, get yourself a costume and some “wonderful toys” or bitten by a radioactive spider and join the fight against crime?

In Boy Wonder [DVD] , Sean Donavon does neither of these things. He becomes an A-grade student. He learns languages, he listens to classical music and he’s a strong athlete. He trains at a kick-boxing gym, but doesn't enter tournaments – what’s the point of competitions? What’s the point when all the time you’re looking for the killer of your Mother? After all these years you’re still looking. You may not have found them, but there are plenty of other people out there who need justice to be brought against them, just read the newspapers.

The Weekend Watch Film - Valhalla Rising

Earlier this month we reviewed Drive, but before that movie and Only God Forgives, Valhalla Rising was Nicolas Winding Rfen's second English language movie after Bronson. It's also the film with the most misleading movie poster/DVD cover in many a year, as the marketing department tries to tap into the hyper-realised, historical ultra-violence market created by 300. This might explain why the film tends to have an adore-it or detest-it response. When you're turning up expecting to see hordes of vikings scrapping it out, and what you find is an hallucinatory, landscape filled journey into Norse myth with beyond minimalist dialogue, you might think you've been short changed. Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt and Casino Royale) plays mute warrior One-Eye in Valhalla Rising [DVD], a film which may (if you let it) take you into a stark dream from a thousand years ago.

All Films are Pointless - Are We Wasting Time in a Disconnected World?

All films are pointless. All of them, not just Armageddon, but all of them. Whether it’s the latest new movies or the classic films in our DVD collections or the movie download that’s just arrived through the ether.

“Film lovers are sick people.” François Truffaut

Films are people pretending to be other people who (often) have never existed. These imaginary people start out as words on a page, scratched there by a writer spinning stories by listening to the voices in their head. The words become characters which are acted out by people trying to be someone else, the images and sounds captured in a little box and screened for our viewing pleasure - and it’s hoped that the watchers will care. It’s ridiculous. There’s a world outside, full of remarkable people and places, so full that none of us will ever experience it all. Why spend what little time we have on this planet sitting on our arses in front of screens of various sizes watching pretend people in made-up stories?

Sea Wall Review - One Man's Soul

Sea Wall (2012)

One Man. One camera.

In a time when we're spit-balled with CGI and aggressive jump cuts designed to make us feel excited at the most pointless events, Sea Wall is at the other end of the film making spectrum. One character. One camera. That never moves. No music. We're in brave territory here, or we're about to be bored rigid.

I watched this on a laptop with headphones in a packed coffee shop and for half an hour the entire world disappeared. My coffee went cold. I think, I think I'd been laughing out loud. I think I'd been sat in the middle of all these people going about their day with very wet eyes.

Sea Wall starts off with a man, Alex, rambling about a holiday he took with his wife, daughter and father-in law. Meandering and looping back on itself, the words touch on family, life and faith in God or something more than the little lives that we have. As Alex trundles off down the tangents and side alleys of his story the feeling begins to grow that all this is going somewhere. You don't know where it's going as you watch Alex, who seems so bright and alive and open, but for some reason you can't pin down a knot of anxiety starts to tighten in your stomach. 

The Weekend Watch Film - Five Easy Pieces

Every Friday we'll post a film that we're going to watch over the weekend.


To kick us off we're starting with Five Easy Pieces from 1970. Oil rigger Jack Nicholson spends his time drinking, bowling and sleeping around, having dropped out of American high-society.

It's a film that seems to get over-shadowed by Nicholson's turns in Easy Rider and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, so we figured it was time to go back and see how it stands up.

If you haven't got anything nice to say... Giving movies bad reviews

We're having a discussion here at the 24 Frames bunker and it's getting a little heated. The point of contention is - 'Do we give bad reviews?'

This is supposed to be a site that cares about film. That loves movies. That wants to celebrate them. Should a site like that put the boot in to movies we don't like? We're not attempting to keep up with the latest cinema, DVD and blu-ray releases after all. We're not trying to guide anyone through the weekly churn of what's hot and what's not. Do you really need someone else to tell you that Transformers 1, 2 and 3 are large mountains of robo-cack? I don't think so. We simply want to talk about the films that we are passionate about. If that's the case then we should only stick to the one's we love...

...but hang on.

Drive Review - A Moment of Neon Movie Beauty

Drive (2011)

I'm going to nail my flag to the mast straight from the off on this one. I love Drive . No, I don't love it, I've become obsessed by it. When I watched Drive for the first time, when the credits rolled, I got myself a drink and hit play on the DVD again. That's only ever happened to me a handful of times. Of all the films I've watched over the last few years this is the one I go back to the most. With every watch it gets better, reveals more and bares a part of its guts never seen before. 

Driver is a stunt driver, working film sets. Between stunt jobs he works at Shannon’s garage. Between those jobs he works as a getaway driver. When he moves into a new apartment he meets his neighbour and her son.

That’s your set up for the movie, and really, the entire movie hinges on the last line above – he meets his neighbour and her son. Everything else that happens in the film comes from that small moment, everything.