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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Life In A Day (Film)

by Annette Basile | August 29, 2011 15:24 | Edited August 29, 2011 15:25

With director Kevin Macdonald finding a rhythm among the myriad footage submitted, this honest, funny and touching doco is an incredible achievement.

The teenage boy shaving for the first time ("I'm bleeding!"). The father in crazily cluttered apartment with a shrine to his departed wife. And the gay guy coming out to his grandma over the phone. These are just some of the moments in this incredible documentary, which was distilled from 80,000 videos submitted to YouTube. All were shot on a single day - Saturday July 24, 2010.

 

Presented by power siblings Ridley and Tony Scott, and directed by Kevin Macdonald (Touching The Void, The Last King Of Scotland), what might have been a mere curio is instead a fine and fascinating documentary. That Life In A Day has any coherency at all is a small miracle. Ignoring time zone differences, it covers a sequential 24 hours of life - the big moments, the little moments and those in between. Macdonald - who also helmed the Oscar-winning doco One Day In September - has found a rhythm here. It's hectic at times, relaxed at others, but somehow unified.

 

Clips are not labeled with locations - some are nevertheless easy to figure out, but others leave few clues. Obviously this is intentional on Macdonald's part but it works against the documentary, as you occasionally find yourself distracted by trying to figure out where the hell the various videos come from.

 

This user-generated experiment was made to mark YouTube's fifth birthday. There's a big product placement, qualifying this electronics company who made the film "possible". But the people who really made this possible are the folk who contributed - those who candidly answered the three questions the filmmakers posed: What do you love?, What do you fear?, and What's in your pocket?. The answers are surprising, touching and sometimes a bit of a worry (like when one woman says she fears cultures she can't understand).

 

Life In A Day is raw, honest, funny, moving - and surprisingly well photographed. It's so rich as to make it worthy of repeated viewings. And it's free of the kinds of attention-seeking bogans that infect reality TV.