Robot and Frank, A Werewolf Boy and Argo

Went for another silly film, though a slightly more highbrow one, in Robot and Frank, which is about a very old ex-cat-burglar in the near future, when robot helpers are an everyday sight. He is given one by his son, and while he detests it at first, he soon sees how it can be used as a tool for burglary, and gains a new lease of life that becomes more meaningful as time goes on.

With a neat mixture of strong performances, the poignancy of the onset of dementia and the classic comedy of robots missing the point or being amusingly blunt, it goes to serious places with a silly idea and ends up working very well. I missed this one in the cinema, but I’m glad I saw it.

Korean film A Werewolf Boy, which I sort of half-watched because it wasn’t exactly captivating, also tried to pluck at the heartstrings, but came over as mostly hollow. A feral boy in his late teens – who of course when scrubbed up is a K-Pop boyfriend hottie – is discovered by a family out in the countryside, where the teenage girl gets past her fear of him to begin making him civilised. And of course, their feelings for one another soon become something more.

Mawkish and overlong, it like so many East-Asian films ends up getting highly melodramatic towards the end, with lots of tears and lovers shouting each others’ names and wicked older men standing in the way of true love. It was a smash hit in South Korea, apparently, but I have to say it didn’t hit any emotional notes for me and came over as very cheesy.

Finally – other than the two animated films that will get their own separate entries, I saw Argo, Ben Affleck’s apparent return to form. Directing and starring with a funny beard, he tells the fascinating true story of how a government agent had to sneak six embassy officials out of Iran during the hostage crisis by pretending they are part of a Canadian crew for a sci-fi film. Obviously, Hollywood loves stories about itself, especially with a real-world-heroes angle and the seriousness of crises in the Middle East, so it was highly lauded at the last Oscars, winning Best Picture.

While somewhat demonising the Iranians as a whole (though that was of course America’s prevailing view at the time) and apparently totally skewing the action to make the Americans look heroic and the Canadians a bit unimportant (as well as for some reason making up a line about other Embassies turning the six away), as well as a number of fictional scenarios to make the action more tense and exciting, taken as a work of entertainment and fiction it was very enjoyable. I did have a slight problem with it relying on making its audience believe it was historically accurate for its impact when it was anything but, but that didn’t stand in the way of it being an enjoyable film.