Film Round-Up: Champions, Rye Lane and Tetris
Right, movie reviews. Let’s write them and then read them.
Champions
Woody Harrelson’s basketball coach is fired and then after doing a DUI, is forced to coach a special needs basketball team. This is pretty typical underdog sports movie fare. Think the Mighty Ducks but with basketball and people with disabilities. Harrelson starts off gruff and just trying to get through his community service but we all know he’s going to grow to like them and realise he’s a better person than he thinks he is. You have seen it a million times before but it’s also a decent execution of the idea. Harrelson is perfect for this sort of the role and he has a very good supporting cast. The characters are all really likable, there’s plenty of good lines and jokes and it is heart warming. If you just need something sporty and feel good, this will do that for you.
Rye Lane
Two people meet each other following going through bad break-ups and help each other through them. I want more rom coms like this. It avoids a lot of the traditional clichés, except one in the conclusion which is a bore as it usually is, and generally relies on the chemistry of it’s two leads. And it turns out if you let two talented actors bounce off eachother for 80 minutes, it just works. This is a pleasure to watch as David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah are great as these two who start to realise that the other person is exactly what they want and need. It’s very cleverly told and the director Raine Allen-Miller is very creative in her choice of shots to liven up the movie visually. Not all of the choices work, let’s send fish eye lens back to the 90s please, but I appreciate someone really trying to make a usually visually bland genre into something more. She’s going to go places, trust me. A fantastic romcom that’s a very easy watch on one of these rainy evenings.
Tetris
Taron Egerton tries to licence the rights to Russian game Tetris but ends up entangled in a Soviet world where the country isn’t quite ready to admit defeat to capitalism. I thought this film was a joke as a Tetris movie is often said derisively against the whole concept of video game movies. But it’s actually pretty fascinating. It’s not really about the video game, really the movie only uses it to add some 8-bit graphics and give it a bit more visual flair, something I completely approve of. What this film is really about is the end of the Cold War and that tricky transition the Soviet Union was about to have. So it’s a bit more like a Cold War thriller except instead of trading nuclear secrets, it’s about getting the licencing rights to Tetris so you can sell the game abroad. It does work and while it does nothing you’ve never seen before, it does everyone it needs to do well. It’s a bit baby’s first Cold War movie, but you’ve got to start somewhere!
