21 year-old Sean Wilson, from Torquay, Englany graduated from the University of the West of England in Bristol with a 2:1 in Film Studies and English. Sean also loves music, especially film music from composers such as John Williams and Thomas Newman. With his love of film, reading and writing, Sean reviews films for the Fujairah Observer!

Boy meets girl… Boy loves girl… Girl doesn’t love boy? That’s the deft premise of new indie 500 Days of Summer, one that flirts with the soppy romcom theatrics before lacing the romance with the bitterness of a broken heart.
Joseph Gordon Levitt (whose star has been on a gradual ascent since Third Rock from the Sun ended) is wannabe LA architect Tom whose career aspirations haven’t amounted to much apart from a job as a greetings card designer. He has oddball friends; loves Britpop; and gets drunk at karaoke, therefore filling the marks as a loveable clutz.
Levitt’s immensely likeable performance finds hidden depths when a new employee, Summer (Zooey Deschanel) wafts into the office like a fragrant breeze. Pretty soon Tom is in love, has made contact and encountered the first date…
Except director Marc Webb’s clever handling of the story isn’t as staid as all that, beginning instead en-media-res at Day 400 and something, where the despairing Tom can’t understand how his apparently solid relationship with Summer has foundered. It then proceeds to zip back and forward through their romance with effortless ease, picking out everything from the tentative beginnings, the initial uncertainties and the confidence of young love at its peak.
What we therefore get is a witty, funny and endearing tapestry of love in all its frustrating forms. Webb refuses to let his film fall into bitty self-contained pieces (as it could easily have done) but charts an emotional rollercoaster, where the pithy humour and warmth of Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber’s screenplay (‘Nobody loves Ringo Starr!’) sits comfortably alongside genuine pathos and heartbreak a few scenes later.
Timelines are disjointed; animation blends with real life; and LA is painted (improbably) as a glowing city of opportunity, all of which may scream smugness to some. Smug it can be: one major concession to other comedies of this ilk is the inclusion of the impossibly wise little sister dishing out relationship advice.
However the core performances are always ready to guide it back to Earth, be it Levitt as the nice guy doomed to failure for not thinking outside of love’s box or Deschanel as the eponymous Summer, luminous and refusing to demonise (or let be demonised) her character’s inscrutable free spirit. A biting pre-credit caption may indicate though that either the director or screenwriters have taken this sort of thing personally… Still, if music be the food of love and all that?

Sean's rating 9/10

Surrogates would appear to be one of those unfortunate releases undermined by its own trailer. The juicy premise of Bruce Willis back in an action setting, a leavening of conspiracy, some thundering set-pieces… Wouldn't Die Hard 2010 be a title more befitting the adverts? It’s even from the director of Terminator 3.
Surprisingly (even shockingly), Surrogates has more up its blockbuster sleeve than that. Unsurprisingly, straight-up action fans will be let down by the lack of Nakatomi Plaza levels of destruction.
In a futuristic USA (the cloistered view of America as the world’s primary civilization still persists, sadly), people choose to plug into ‘surrogate’ versions of themselves, rather than face the outside world. Crime levels and communicable disease have dropped sharply, so all would appear well… Until that is the son of the creator of surrogacy is found murdered, his real-life operator being discovered dead as well.
A mop-topped Willis as FBI Agent Greer investigates, accompanied by sexy partner Peters (Radha Mitchell, doing little but sexy). What he uncovers will have far reaching consequences not only for the future of the country and surrogacy but for himself, as the real life (slap head) Greer comes to rebel against his make-believe state…
Yes, the premise is derivative and the inspirations shameless, both literary (Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty Four) and cinematic (Minority Report, I Robot). Certain elements don’t gel (Ving Rhames as a dreadlocked human rebel leader set against surrogacy comes across as a hairier, militant Benjamin Zephaniah); while others have all too quickly become eye rolling clichés of the genre (the electronic product placement was refreshing in Minority Report but cynical here).
However, director Jonathan Mostow can finally indulge himself a thoughtful scenario - a slick blend of moderate noir intrigue in a futuristic setting – having been freed from the franchise shackles of Terminator 3 (with the surplus requirements of relentless CGI and Arnie in-jokes no longer a pre-requisite).
He has a strong moral centre in Willis who pleasingly doesn’t rely on the mere contrast of haircuts to define Greer’s character. Surrogate Greer is slick and glowering of brow, while the real one is a shambling, anxious wreck, Willis’ sensitive performance investing the film with quiet pathos, a man again forced to face the real world existing beyond his apartment door. His interactions with a typically glacial Rosamund Pike as his surrogate dependent wife wrestles with darker emotional undercurrents that could do with being explored further, although the film’s brevity, at 85 mins, is refreshing.
If the rest of the film is more of a sap to predictability, with yet another waste of the brilliant James Cromwell as the arch scientist at the heart of the mystery, at least it’s brave enough to end on a note of ostensible hope brimmed with dubious undercurrents. Funnily enough there are overtones of Terminator 3’s climactic high note, where a commercial product finally has the gumption to leave its audience thinking rather than buzzing.

Sean's rating: 6/10