Monday 24 June 2013

Freeview (UK) films of the day : monday 24th of June



Limitless (2011 100min.) [Film4 9.00pm &+1]

Sci-fi thriller starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. One of life's losers is transformed into a high-achieving dynamo thanks to a mysterious new drug, but his overnight success attracts the wrong kind of attention from those keen to profit from the discovery.

A fairly routine fear of the future thriller is made into an above average film by Bradley Cooper's believable everyman whose life suddenly becomes filled with impossible highs and equally violent lows and by the skilled direction of Neil Burger who creates a visual world to match these changes of mood.

Not essential by a long way but interesting enough.


Departures (2008 125min.) [Film4 1.20am tuesday &+1]

Drama starring Masahiro Motoki. When unemployed cello player Daigo answers an advertisement for a job in "departures", he imagines working for a travel company. But his new job is with a funeral parlour, and the experience of preparing the dead for burial will give Daigo a new perspective on life.

An odd little film that is, by turns, comic, uplifting, witty and just a little repulsive.

Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue and Tsutomu Yamazaki are all excellent in the lead roles and director Yojiro Takita seems to be having enormous fun with the off-kilter subject matter.

Fun.

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