In The Mood for Love review

 Number 216 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Chinese romance-drama 'In the Mood for Love.'

Mr Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs Chan (Maggie Cheung) are two neighbours who have just moved into a Hong Kong apartment block. Suspecting their respective spouses of cheating on them, the two start becoming attracted to each other. Will they be like their spouses and have an affair too?

Never mind love, I'm in the mood for an entertaining film, because this was film was dull. Insufferably dull. Boring. Tedious. Monotonous. Insert any other synonym for boring. It's a drama. Where was the drama? The tension?

It's quickly established that Mr Chow and Mrs Chan are lonely; their spouses work long hours and are inattentive. Although we never see this on-screen. Plus it isn't like the two would-be lovers are social pariahs. Mrs Chan's neighbours are constantly inviting her in for dinner, but she always refuses. If you actually had dinner with your neighbours, you wouldn't be so lonely. At a certain point, you're just being a victim.

And there's nothing stopping Mr Chow and Mrs Chan from having an affair if they really wanted. Their neglectful spouses are nowhere to be seen. They have no rivals for each other's interests. We, the audience, can see how lonely they are, so we're willing for them to get together. Where's the tension? It's virtually non-existent. In fact, the first moment of tension doesn't occur until the hour mark, where the would-be lovers realise they can't be together.

The film isn't particularly long; only one hundred minutes, but that's ten minutes too long. The film ends with Mr Chan in Angkor Wat whispering into the hole of a temple wall before stuffing it with moss. This references an earlier section where he says that in the olden times people would go up a mountain, whisper their secrets into a hole of a tree before filling it with moss. I get the visual metaphor, but why have it in Angkor Wat and not a tree on a mountain? And why we did then pan around Angkor Wat for five minutes?

One positive was that the original score was very good - it was mysterious and compelling, but it was only used sparingly. Much of the rest of the film had no incidental music, which only made it all the more boring.

And boring is the perfect way of summarising this film. Not enough tension. Annoying characters doing annoying things and too many lingering shots of characters sitting in empty rooms deep in thought.

Taken review

 Number 418 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2008 action-thriller Taken.

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is an ex-CIA operative with an estranged wife and daughter. When his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is kidnapped in Paris by an Albanian sex-trafficking gang, he has to put his very particular set of skills into good use.

Let's get one thing straight. Taken is your generic, run-of-the-mill, action-thriller. It's never going to be an Oscar darling nor will it get a standing ovation at Cannes. In the vein of many action-films, it's completely ridiculous and over-the-top. But that's okay. That's exactly what we expect.

And to criticise Taken for its action sequences would be to criticise its very essence. Not to mention its best parts. As the action and the dialogue were certainly nothing stellar. Although Maggie Grace didn't have much acting to do except be the damsel-in-distress for Liam Neeson's knight in shining armour. And Famke Janssen who played Mills' ex-wife had little characterisation except for being a giant thorn in the side of our big action hero.

Or should I say action-hero reborn. Taken redefined Liam Neeson as an action-star and he certainly carried the action well. The fight scenes were well-choregraphed and he was very convincing.  He isn't particularly big or imposing, but he still made Bryan Mills a character you don't want to mess with.

Taken was a fast-paced, exciting and intense thriller. If you like such things then you'll definitely enjoy this film. And if you don't then this is certainly not the film for you.

Gosford Park review

 Number 992 on the top 1000 films of all time is Robert Altman's 2001 period drama/murder mystery Gosford Park.

Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) is a wealthy industrialist, married to Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) who invites a group of equally wealthy Britons and one American to dine in his country estate. Some of these guests include Sylvia's aunt Constance, Dowager Countess of Trentham) (Maggie Smith,) William's brother-in-law Raymond, Lord Stockbridge (Charles Dance,) film star and William's cousin Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam) and American film producer Morriss Weissman (Bob Balaban.) However, when one of the party is discovered dead, everybody becomes a suspect. This includes all of the downstairs staff. Richard E. Grant, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Watson, Eileen Atkins and Helen Mirren star as some of the butlers, valets, cooks and housekeepers.

I can totally understand why this film is so low down on this list. It was so boring. When things actually got going, it did start to pick up, but it takes over an hour for things to get going. Prior to anybody being murdered, it was an endless onslaught of rich, pretentious people talking about rich and pretentious things. All of the characters very much blurred into one and it was difficult to distinguish between them all. The cast was far bigger than it had any right to be.

This is a period drama and I bloody hate period dramas, so, no doubt, I do have some bias toward this film. Period dramas have never been something that's interested me. They're full of unrelatable characters with unrelatable problems. And I don't know why they're called dramas. There's nothing dramatic or remotely interesting about them. That criticism very much applies to Gosford Park too.

 Julian Fellowes wrote Gosford Park, so it's no surprise that the film turned out the way it did. He's part of the House of Lords and a member of the British landed gentry. Originally, Downton Abbey, which Julian Fellowes also wrote, was supposed to be a spin-off of Gosford Park, before it became its own show. I haven't watched Downton Abbey and I have no bloody intention to now.

As I said, once somebody actually dies, things become interesting, because we have a mystery to solve. We're treated to Stephen Fry playing the incompetent Inspector Thompson. He really helped to liven up the stuffy atmosphere. But why do we have to wait over an hour to get to this point? By this point, I had almost lost interest in the film. It was all so pretentious.

I really did not care for Gosford Park at all. It was overly-long, boring, pretentious and a sheer waste of the acting talent involved. But I am biased toward period dramas, so maybe that's just me.