21st June 06 - Thank You For Smoking

Utter the phrase ‘a film about a pro-tobacco lobbyist’ and feel the hands reaching for the phones by people who like to complain about things that if they disapprove of so much they should use their tiny brains and not watch instead of whining about them and spoiling it for the rest of us free-thinking intelligent beings who understand the concept of satire and don’t always take things at face value. Sorry – pet hate.

Anyway, Thank You For Smoking (TYFS) centres on Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart - in his first lead role as far as I can tell) who’s a hated man because he spends his days promoting cancer on a stick. He’s a smarmy sweet talker, twisting ideas and propelling them right back at you. And he’s really good at it. But as the lead, we of course can’t have Nick as a total arse, otherwise the audience will never root for him. So bring in small alien-faced son, who looks up to his dad as a role model. There – now he’s more human. And Eckhart manages it – you’re convinced this guy can twist his morals enough to continue with his career, but through the loving glances at his son and very occasional facial twitch as his morals are stretched to the limit, he’s also a likeable guy.

TYFS takes a no frills approach to the Tobacco vs Health Authority battle of morals. There is no black and white. The Tobacco companies are constantly trying to find ‘no evidence’ of health risks to soil their name, and the health guys are trying to find ‘cancer kids with no hope’, to further increase their point. And maybe the tobacco guys are shown as sleazy but successful, while the health guys are weedy and a bit pathetic. Biased? Is the satire really satire, or is this film actually funded by the tobacco companies in a huge conspiracy to make smoking cool? The noticeable absence of any kind of smoking in this film dispels any such thoughts, which are pretty stupid thoughts anyway.

So, was it good? Yes. (If only reviews could be this simple. It would certainly save me, and you, lots of time.) TYFS was easy to watch, amusing, some great one liners, some great performances, some food for thought. It certainly was good, and as such it makes CF0 (which, as a reminder, means I liked it and would recommend it). But it doesn’t gain any extra points. And here’s why. First off, there were too many characters. Some, like Katie Holmes’ reporter, are vacuous and one dimensional (also, as an ex-trainee journo, I am always angered by the portrayal of reporters as evil creatures whoring themselves out for the story) and others, like Rob Lowe’s loopy Hollywood casting agent (his reply to ‘when do you sleep’ was “Sunday”) should’ve been used in more than one scene. The wry tone was sweetened a little too much for my liking by the father/son aspect, especially towards the end, and though it was pretty amusing, there were stretches where my mind wandered away from the screen and on into pretty places inside my brain. For just a 93 minute jaunt, it felt a lot longer.

But hey, that’s just me being picky. Still enjoyed it. Wasn’t blown away, but it’s good enough to get CF0 and that, surely, is something to celebrate. Perhaps with a cigarette...

14th June 06 - Mission: Impossible III

There was a bit of a film drought this week (I just cannot bring myself to watch the Da Vinci Code. It goes against every fibre of my brain) so I found myself opting for Mission: Impossible III. The first one was pretty enjoyable, the second had a lot of slow mo and doves (cheers Mr. Woo) so I was expecting a fairly entertaining, but definitely silly affair. My expectations were pleasingly met.

MI3 has everything you could possibly want. Car chases, helicopter chases, chases on foot, shoot-outs, fist fights, gadgets, parachutes, clever plans to foil the baddies. Bombs implanted in brains. Brilliant stuff. There’s a team of hot young spies, Ving Rhames doing one-liners, Laurence Fishburne’s huge mottled head, hell even Simon Pegg as an Oxford-trained IT type guy. Something for everyone. Director J.J.Abrams (of Lost and Alias) delivers a slick, stylish approach, with well handled action scenes, bits of slow-mo (but not over-blown aka Woo) and an absolutely belting start. All films should start like that (beaten up Tom, gun to girlfriend’s head, countdown from 10…) Brilliant stuff.

The presence of the Cruise may put some people off. His celebrity persona has certainly rubbed quite a few people up the wrong way. Constantly happy, a bit of a creepy relationship, and beliefs that I won’t comment on, just in case I’m sued for using words like ‘manipulative’ and ‘bizarre’. But like him or not, the guy can do good films. True, he may play a similar character in everything I’ve seen (apart from in the excellent Magnolia) but you can’t help but admire his on-screen status. Action-wise, he delivers the goods – sprinting about, leaping on to cars, hanging out of helicopters. For a 44 year old, he ain’t half bad. And, bless him, he works his socks off to really get those emotions out there, with those big, blurred wounded eyes. I suspect he’s had some sort of surgical procedure that allows him to press a button and create a tear from his left eye on cue. There’s always a left eye tear – you watch.

Of course this film is flawed, as are most ‘action’ flicks. Characters are impervious to enemy fire but can take out others with single shots, locks are picked with the slightest of ease, latex masks are stupidly realistic and there are some areas of the plot that they don’t even bother explaining. But that’s what you expect from Mission Impossible. If you don’t, then you’re an idiot and you deserve to be disappointed. Accept the silliness and just sit back and enjoy. I did, and because it delivered what I wanted it gains a CF0 rating.

7th June 06 - Down in the Valley

Cowboys are so hot right now. Everyone wants to be one. Harlan (Edward Norton) is no exception. He has the clothes, he knows the moves. He’s in modern day L.A. It’s a mismatch that could spark a comic masterpiece, where the crazy cowboy doesn’t understand modern life and everyone has a good laugh, a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies. And by comic masterpiece, I mean crushing torment.

But I’m totally digressing, because Down in the Valley isn’t a crushing comedy at all. It starts off as a gentle summer romance and slowly twists into a skewed western/thriller combo type thing. Harlan meets Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood, played by a bleached skeleton) and despite the age difference (Tobe’s a rebellious teen) they fall in love. Aw. It’s all summer fields and swaying grasses and swings on trees. It’s like summer on screen. And yes, maybe not a whole lot happens. But there’re hints that maybe Harlan’s a tad insane. And each hint adds to the general sense of foreboding that casts a cloud over all the summer fun and makes it just that little bit more interesting.

You know the manure’s going to hit the fan sooner or later, but when and how turns out to be a well played shock. And then things start to get a bit strange. There’s a fugitive situation, chases, shoot outs. What starts out as a meandering stroll turns into a bit of a scrabble, and perhaps writer/director David Jacobson gets a little bit carried away with it all. Unfortunately this is at the cost of the tone, which was slowly developed over the first half, and is then peed on from a great height by all the guns.

But, flawed though it may be, I still liked this film. The cast are indestructibly good. To be honest I could watch Ed Norton read out the Yellowpages and still be enthralled. He’s fast becoming one of my favourite actors, and adds great depth to mixed up Harlan, who’s just tying to find an identity. And likes guns. Evan Rachel Wood, annoyingly just nineteen years old, is solidly sultry, and little Rory Culkin, who’s surprisingly seventeen, plays a convincing thirteen year old. Top all that with David Morse (he’s in everything you’ve ever seen) as the sometimes violent but slightly sympathetic father figure, and you’ve got a pretty damn good cast.

Despite the muddled finale, there are also some great little touches. The slow sink into Western territory, matching our gradual understanding of Harlan’s dodgy sanity, offers up some striking contrasts. A car vs. horse chase through a posh housing development. A splendid shoot out on the set of a Western film set. It’s just a shame that the film started to feel just as confused as Harlan towards the end.

I’ve been struggling to rate this film. It makes CF0, gains a point for the acting, but loses one for getting all weird at the end. So CF0 it is.

1st June 06 - X-Men: The Last Stand

Ah comics. The source of a cornucopia of characters from which Mr. Movieland can pick and choose, sometimes creating genius (Spider-Man, Batman Begins) and sometimes creating a frightening mess (Daredevil, Catwoman). X-Men has already spouted two films, both of which didn’t do too bad a job. And now we get this third and supposedly final offering (I'll believe it when I see it) which starts off this summer’s blockbuster run.

As a partial nerd (I watched the cartoons, but didn’t read the comics) I was looking forward to X3, but went in expecting a mediocre effort based on reviews and instincts. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself, well, pleasantly surprised. Being the final film gets rid of the sequel pressure, giving a free-for-all on plot turns. And some plot turns genuinely shocked me. I kept expecting there to be a ‘surprise! We didn’t really just do that!’ But there never was. This slight feeling of doom helped to darken X3’s mood, and give it more of an edge. My main problem with the previous films was they felt too much of a 12-rated affair. It was violence and chaos but in a 12-rated way. A bit too safe for my liking. But despite X3’s 12A stamp, there are some pretty horrific moments, which if watched through an 8 year old’s eyes might make a psychological stamp similar to the one imprinted on my brain from the T-1000.

Anyway, there’re some neat moments in this film (especially the transformation from Jean into the Phoenix, despite being inaccurate) and some great action set pieces. There’re also a trillion new characters, which highlights the fundamental flaw with trying to film X-Men. Through an endless stream of comics you can set up characters and give them all the depth and back-story you want. In a couple of hours, you’re going to struggle. Not only do you need to introduce the newbies, you’ve got all the old favourites to include, plus a couple of lines of plot, plus fight scenes and action pieces. It doesn’t leave much room for dialogue, or much time for any depth to the characters, and the film suffers for it. The new faces include Vinnie Jones (playing himself) as the unstoppable Juggernaut, who is fairly unstoppable for about three seconds. There’s a few S&M style baddie mutants who share five minutes of screen time (they get a turn each to do their powers), and the brilliant Angel, whose character showed so much promise after being introduced as a child trying desperately to file down his wings, and who is completely and shamefully wasted.

The familiar faces also suffer with the jam-packed nature of the film. Even wonderful Wolverine feels deflated, with less time to be angry and wise-cracking, instead just going through the motions and whipping out his claws on cue. But for some reason Storm is given more screen time. Who made that stupid decision? Storm’s rubbish. They may have given her a new hair do and let her fly around a bit, but my interest in her character is about as small as Halle Berry’s waist. The main ‘players’ over on the baddies side, Magneto and the Phoenix, spend most of their time standing with their legs slightly apart and watching stuff, waiting for something to do.

It’s a case of too much crammed in to too little. But what else could they have done? If they were to go into full detail the film would be about 6 hours long. And if they didn’t bother bringing in anyone new then what’s the point in another sequel? It’s a tough job, and overall it wasn’t done half bad. There’s thrills, there’s a few ideas thrown up to ponder and there’s a darkness in it that I admired. If you stay till after the credits then you get a scene that is quite frankly creepy, creepy, creepy. Plus you get to see a blue Frasier Crane kick ass. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s still enjoyable. It makes CF0, and I’m awarding an extra point because it had the balls to avoid the safe route, and instead do some nasty things to our beloved X-Men. Therefore it’s a CF1.

24th May 06 - Russian Dolls

If you’re told you’re about to see a film that’s in French, English and Russian, the average fool would think that it would entail pretension, confusion and foreign people. Only one is correct in this case. In fact, after a span of off-the-wall cinema choices, Russian Dolls is probably the most “mainstream” film I’ve seen in weeks. The genre is worryingly close to ‘rom-com’, which was at first alarming to me. Just thinking about rom-com’s usually makes me want to kill someone horribly, just to get rid of the fake, sugar-coated view they have of the world. But Russian Dolls takes a more matter-of-fact view on love, as in; it’s unpleasant, difficult and creates a big mess.

Now before all those luvvie duvvies raise their hands in horror and protest, let me finish the review. Russian Dolls centres on Xavier (a carbon copy of Seth from the OC), a just-turned-thirty French writer who spends his time scrabbling for work and trying to find himself a woman. Xavier’s problem is he wants the perfect woman, so he ends up sabotaging fledgling relationships just in case something better comes along. The big idiot. His story spans several countries, gathers numerous characters (some of which featured in the film’s predecessor Auberge Espagnole, which you don’t need to have seen to appreciate this follow up) and delves into several sub-plots, some probably unnecessary but all oddly intriguing.

As far as ‘com’ goes, this film ticks the box. It’s not wet-your-pants hilarious, but there are some very amusing moments, and some brilliantly playful fantasy sequences. The cast are models straight out of an advert for designer clothes. They are all infuriatingly beautiful, and I’d hate every one of them if they couldn’t act. But subtle glances, blinked back tears and cheeky smiles save the day. There’s also lots of nudity – male and female. Something for everyone.

Ok, so back to the ‘rom’. This isn’t the clichéd rubbish that Xavier himself is forced to write for television. Characters are greatly flawed. Audrey Tautou’s Martine is a big cow, flicking through men and using Xavier when she’s lonely. Londoner Wendy keeps going back to her violent loser boyfriend. Xavier screws up a promising relationship by screwing around. Even the one couple who find love of a Russian variety and get married at the end aren’t perfect – their brief looks of uncertainty darkened the mood in places. It’s all quite real, and therefore I liked it. I especially liked Xavier’s final analogy between love and Russian Dolls – that you know the final doll is in there somewhere, but you have to go through all the others to get to it, and you’re never sure if each one will be the last. It’s so very true, and although it casts a small cloud over the potentially happy ending (is she really the last ‘doll’?) it still provides a glimmer of hope for miserable bastards like me - that someday you will stumble across the smallest doll.

Russian Dolls is over two hours long, and perhaps there are scenes and entire sub-plots that can be cut out without affecting the essence of the film. But it’s so jam packed with characters and plot it doesn’t feel like time is being dragged out. Actually, you could probably expand all the subplots and make a decent TV series out of it. But as a stand alone film, it has enough humour, interest and snazzy directing techniques to be successful. It makes CF0, and gains an extra point for having a realist view of romance, and because I fancied the lead actor. Therefore Russian Dolls gets CF1.

16th May 06 - Brick

Hype is a tricky devil. It can turn a release date into a highly anticipated event, but make a good film a crushing disappointment. Brick received very good reviews from various folk, and as such I went in expecting something amazing. Mr. Hype strikes again.

But let’s hold back on the usual ‘could have been more’ debate, and look at this film through the right lens. Noir is the term, and for a detailed description of what noir entails, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir and note the ‘elements’ section. This will give you a clue as to what this film is about.

So, approach this from a homage to noir (what a fun sentence to say in a posh accent) and things start to look better. You have a murder mystery, an alienated hero, a jet black mood and lots of arty farty shots. And it’s all set in high school, but not in an irritating way. These teens are rarely in school, they’re all intelligent enough to be able to scheme and their dialogue is playfully poetic. You’ve got a character called The Brain, who actually looks like Brains from Thunderbirds, and a 26 year-old drug dealer with a cane. It’s teetering on ridiculous and reminded me slightly of Bugsy Malone (which I never warmed to as a child. I didn’t like the kids being scared of those custard guns – couldn’t figure out why they weren’t firing real bullets. I was a slightly disturbed child.)

Anyway, you could take badly to this film and see it as an up itself blah-de-blah type of affair. But keep ‘noir’ in your mind and it hits the spot, mostly because of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He stomps around, hands stuffed into pockets, curly fringe covering moody stare. And when he breaks down in one scene, the raw emotion still trying to be checked by his tough exterior, there’s a strong hint that this guy’s going to be a big contender in the future. And extra points for having a glasses-wearing hero who isn’t a dweeb.

Other high points include some effective use of lighting with a spinning mirror, jarringly cut fights and a chase scene where the only sound is the echo of desperate footsteps. There was some good stuff in this film. But I didn’t come away completely wowed. Why? First off, there’s Mr. Hype. Secondly, I spent a lot of it struggling to hear muttered clues and remembering which one was Tug and which one was Dode. And thirdly the mystery wasn’t that big a mystery. There was a round-up of the plot at the end, which was necessary, but the whole ‘who dunnit’ angle wasn’t mind blowing. The plot wasn’t really clever, just had a lot of names.

So, on a general out of ten rating, Brick makes 8. On the CF rating, it automatically makes 0. There’s an extra point for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and another for creating noir and bringing it into the modern day high school. In total it makes CF2.

10th May 06 - The Magician

I could’ve made this film. If I had access to a bald ozzie bloke. And my own video camera. But that’s about all you’d need to recreate it. In an age of $200m budgets, The Magician is a breath of fresh air. Shot on a shoddy camera, with bad sound, no lighting and shaky footage when on foot, this film is the essence of cheapness. And it shows you don’t need mega bucks to make a good piece of film.

The Magician is a ‘documentary’ by a ‘film student’ about Ray the hitman. It centres on one client in particular, and flitters around interviews with Ray about his job and circumstances. To take this view on an already milked concept (see Leon, Assassin, Gross Point Blank, etc etc) is a smart move. Hitmen are generally portrayed as cool dudes, silent hunters, sporting black jackets and slow-mo super kick ass moves. In The Magician you get to see one eating a McDonalds with a glob of mayo on his face.

Ray (Scott Ryan - also the writer and director, the greedy munchkin) is the star of the show. His weird rectangular teeth hide a violent streak that’s often blackly amusing. Though his occupation is a tad morally wrong, we get to see a softer side to him. Well, occasionally soft. The banter between Ray and Max, the documentary maker, is fantastic. Acted so naturally, it’s difficult to tell whether their conversations are scripted or ad-libbed, but the great moral debates they hold (how much money would it take to eat your own shit?) are probably the highlight of this film.

With an original take on the hitman genre and likeable characters, it’s all the more disappointing that The Magician flops at the finale. Themes and ideas that are touched on should have been bulked up so much more. I wanted to know more about Ray, I wanted to see his friendship increase with Max, and I wanted to see that relationship tested by Ray’s occupation. All of this was there, very fleetingly, but it never really took off. If it had, then the emotional impact would have been substantial. As it was, I was left feeling a little flat and mostly disappointed – there was a lot of promise here, and it’s a great shame that it lost the ‘wow’ factor.

The Magician gets 7/10. On the new CF scale (see post ‘The New CF Scale’) it starts at ‘0’, and is awarded one CF point for having such a small budget, and for featuring believable, funny dialogue. It therefore makes CF 1.

The New CF Scale

After recent conversations with my friends at kinoland and emosciencemusings, I have decided to alter the ratings system used on this site. Current ratings are out of 10, with ‘5’ being average, ‘10’ being absolutely impossibly brilliant, and ‘1’ utter and complete shite. But because I choose my cinema trips carefully, I avoid all films that would usually get a below 5 rating, so most of my reviews fall into the ‘7’ category. Hence the repeated use of decimal places to try and distinguish one ‘7’ film from another.

Thus the new Cinemafool (CF) rating is born. It is based on the preconception that every film I go to see is a 7 rated film. On the new scale, 7 = 0. Extra marks can then be scored, up to a maximum of 5, for any aspects of the film that I deem greater than 7. Or for the occasional slip-up, marks can be lost, down to negative 5, depending on the crapness.

For example:

Tsotsi was given 8.5/10 on the old scale.

• It automatically makes ‘0’ because it’s more than 7.
• I’ve decided to add 2 extra marks for the emotional thrust of the film.
• So Tsotsi makes a CF score of 2.
• (Some might think it’d be 1.5, if you take it from 8.5 minus 7. But the scales don’t transfer that neatly. This gives me more scope for films better than a 7.)
  

Another example:

Closer was awarded 5.5/10.

• It therefore does not even reach CF 0 – instead I put it at CF-2. It loses 2 CF points for having crap dialogue and featuring Clive Owen.

In short, if a film makes CF 0, then it’s worth seeing. The more CF points it gains, the more I’d recommend it. It’s that simple.

From now on all films will be rated on the CF scale, but with an additional rating out of ten for those who are a bit silly and don’t understand what I’ve just plainly written.

4th May 06 - C.R.A.Z.Y

Being gay and having your father hate you for it is not a new concept. Hell, they even covered it in Dawson’s Creek. So I was a bit dubious about watching C.R.A.Z.Y, simply because I’ve seen it all before. But CRAZY (I’m omitting the full stops because it’s just plain annoying to type) has an ace up its sleeve. As well as the ‘I’m gay and my father can’t handle it’ story, there’s an extra ‘religious faith healer’ angle. Interesting…

So we have little Zach, growing up with four brothers and struggling to deal with the very ‘trait’ his father constantly puts down. Zach was born on Christmas day, making him a) grumpy that his birthday has to be shared with Jesus, and b) ‘special’ in his mother’s eyes, supposedly blessed with the ability to heal. As Zach gets older, he finds it more difficult to hide his true feelings and keep his dad happy at the same time. Oh, and he doesn't believe in healing anymore. But sometimes he does.

So what’s good about it? Well, Marc-Andre Grondin, who plays teenage to twenty-something Zach. I found him to be an engaging and likeable lead, not just because I may have fancied the pants off him. He managed to portray the rebellious teen who just wants to be loved without coming across like a brat, and handled his growing fondness for men with confidence, especially when considering the lucky bastard is a year younger than me in real life. The direction (by Jean-Marc Vallee) is punchy and playful, incorporating fantasy scenes without resembling Ally McBeal, and there are some great moments of humour mixed with real poignancy.

Unfortunately, CRAZY struggles with themes and, well, the point. There are lots of neat ideas and characters that are never really played out to their fullest. Apart from his druggy loser older brother, Zach’s other siblings are just background (and why does the clever one have to be wearing glasses? And the exact same pair of glasses ten years later – what, does the director think we’re so stupid that we need such an obvious visual clue to pinpoint which grown-up character is which. Why not add name tags just to be sure.) The whole ‘is Zach a healer’ thing is an interesting side-line, but it’s never really concluded, which makes it feel a bit, well, pointless. It’s like they started out with all these ideas and then didn’t know what to do with them. So instead they send Zach to the desert and have him rescued by some passing travellers. Eh?

The film is a hefty 127 minutes long. You can get a lot into two hours, but CRAZY just doesn’t. Sure, there are some really effective scenes in there, but it’s like having a neat stack of cards and dropping them on the floor. You start off with some structure, but end up with a sprawling mess. I did like most of this film, (the soundtrack was especially good) but it needs tightening up, stripping down, and a clearer idea of what it’s trying to say. However, the acting and bouncy direction manage to bring it up to 7.

27th April 06 - Tsotsi

Some people say I have a heart of stone. Maybe because I don’t like to emote in public. I’d rather hold in my feelings and let them fester until they erupt in bouts of depression or rage. So when a film makes me shed a tear, it’s a safe bet to say it’s got some power. Some films, like When Harry Met Sally or (in my foolish teenage years) Titanic, can chip at the stone and create a little hole and thus a few tears. Very few films manage to blast the rock away completely. This is one of them.

Tsotsi (Oscar winner for best foreign language film) is about a thug (‘Tsotsi’ literally means ‘thug’) who comes into the possession of a baby, which makes him question his approach to life. It’s a pretty simple story, but it doesn’t need any more than that. This film is all about the emotion. And right from the start it got me.

Now, when I talk about emotion I don’t mean ‘weepy weepy tear-jerker’. I mean it just made me feel. The opening mugging scene chilled me to my very core. It’s not that it’s particularly gory – I’m completely desensitised to violence on film anyway. It’s just the reality of a horrible act. And it’s the reality of the film that is strike one in the attack on my defences. This film deals with poverty – we’re talking little kids living in concrete cylinders. I’ve seen ‘poverty films’ before, and let’s be totally honest here. They make me shudder, but I can’t relate them to my perfect white middle-class world. We all watch them and see the dusty grounds and crappy little huts and think ‘god, that’s awful. But it’s not here.’ It’s so removed from our own existence that we may as well watch a sci-fi. But Tsotsi balances the shanty towns with towering cities and quiet little neighbourhoods. Places that we know. And then it cuts back to flats built on wobbly bricks with metal sheets for doors. Ouch.

Strike two is Presley Chweneyagae, who plays the title role. He could have gone through the whole film without saying a word and it would still have packed the same punch. We see just enough of his past to get why he is what he is, and the rest is explained through his eyes. Crikey, those eyes can convey everything he’s feeling as clearly as a big caption coming up on the screen. And as he stares mournfully at his new child companion, we start to see it through his own tortured childhood. That baby is one tubby, gurgling little cutie. And I’m not even a big fan of babies, especially babies in films. They could’ve gone down the ‘bumbling guy can’t figure out how to handle bawling baby, oh the hilarity’ route. But they didn’t. Sure, it’s amusing as he discovers the joys of a full nappy. But it’s not clown-like comedy. It’s touching. And, for me at least, it’s always darkened by this underlying fear, brought on by my own pre-conceptions of what happens in films about bad guys who aren’t bad at the core and try to do good. I won’t say whether I was right or not. But as the film built to its climax, my fear of what would happen grew and grew. The more I watched, the more I cared, the more I feared what was going to happen, and the more I knew that if it was to happen I was going to handle it badly. At the end I was experiencing so much emotion that my stomach was crumpling under the pressure (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t due to too much ice cream.) My tears mirrored Tsotsi’s. I couldn’t help it. And afterwards I was left with a wedge of emotion in my throat that was so big it took at least an hour to subside.

I know I’ve said previously that I’m not a big fan of weepy films (see Brokeback Mountain.) But this film wasn’t exactly ‘sad’. It was just… I can’t even put it into words. I will say that anyone who feels nothing after watching this film doesn’t just have a heart of stone – they’re soulless evil. Tsotsi makes the much sought-after 8.5. S’good.

19th April 06 - Junebug

I actually woke up this morning and forgot I had been to the cinema last night. Oh dear.

Junebug is one of those rare films where I went in knowing absolutely nothing about it. It makes a nice change to watch a film with no expectations. This was a conscious choice, by the way. I’m not one of those idiots who don’t know anything and blindly stumble into the cinema (who fall on two levels – the general dimwit: ‘I didn’t know the Producers would be a musical!’ And the dangerously dense: at the end of Fellowship of the Ring ‘is that it? Where’s the end?’)

Anyway, it took me a while to figure out what I thought of this film. On the one hand it has moments of, well, not brilliance, but ‘fairly good-ness’. Gentle humour, kooky characters, a lolling plot that softly lifts up ideas about relationships and family. It’s inoffensive, amusing, and offers enough tid-bits to ponder (compare the three relationships and see how those that at first appear strongest may well be the least likely to succeed.)

On the other hand, this is one of those films that feels twice as long as it is and makes you feel very tired at the end. There’s endless shots of nothing, with no sound (not an easy film to eat Skittles to) and very little point. If you scrape the bottom of the arsey analyst’s barrel, you could maybe come up with ‘oh, they’ve shown that car reversing up that long drive to show the backwards nature of the area’, but really that’s pushing it. You get the backwards nature of the area with all the scrotum paintings, anyway. There’s no need for anything else.

So, if you took a pair of scissors to this film and cut out all the shots of empty rooms and forests, then you’d get a sort of interesting film with sort of interesting characters and a sort of interesting plot. As it is, you get a sort of interesting film with huge chunks of boring fluff. At every piece of fluff I decided the film was slow and pointless, but there were just enough sparks of fairly good-ness to stop me from disliking it. So what score do I give it? If I was the editor, then it would have reached 7. As it is, it makes 6.5.

12th April 06 - Inside Man

You can look at this film in two ways.

The first is from the perspective of the Easter holiday teenage pleb. This is your basic ‘bank robber vs hostage negotiator’ as seen in films like ‘The Negotiator’. Not exactly a new concept. There’s the clever robber, Clive Owen, with his usual ‘trying to be cool by speaking slowly in a silly accent’, and the kooky detective, Den-ZEL Washington, whose mouth and speech patterns are so much like Adam Sandler’s I wouldn’t be surprised if they were brothers, apart from the obvious difference of course. There’s an extra notch to the plot as Jodie Foster, who has the weirdest shiny legs I’ve ever seen, is called in to protect a very sensitive item inside the bank. And that’s about it. The robber’s plan is sort of clever, but the end reveal isn’t jaw-dropping, just makes you go ‘oh’. It’s fairly enjoyable, but a bit too long.

The other perspective is from the person who reads things and knows that the director is Mr Spike Lee, who likes to make statements about things, you know, like racism blah blah. This is what I’ve read, anyway, because the only other Spike Lee film I’ve seen was Summer of Sam, which I turned off half way through due to rigid boredom. I was younger and therefore less intelligent, so I could have been wrong. I doubt it, though. Anyway, Spike has things to say, so what’s he saying with this tale of bank robbery? The answer is lots. Some points are strikingly obvious (“Nazis are bad” – oh really? You’ve so changed my view of the world) and forced down your throat (let’s have a scene with little Tommy playing a violent video game for no reason other than to highlight the violence of video games and rap, how clever). Other points sort of pissed me off. Example: put all the hostages in masks and they all look the same. Oh look, race is inconsequential, we’re all just human beings. Look how the police react when one mask reveals a white man, and the other reveals a Sikh. Racism is bad. Very true. But how come masks can conceal race, but not big titties? The women in this film are either sexual objects or (the intelligent one, of course) the essence of evil wrapped in skirt. Come on Spike – you’ll stick up for one ‘ism’, but what about the others?

Anyway, you don’t learn much about Clive Owen, so whether he wins or loses doesn’t really matter. Denzel is good, but isn’t he always. The plot is reasonable, but not mind blowing and with a few little holes (how did the robber know about the ‘sensitive materials’?) And the messages are convoluted and a little bit arsey.

BUT, despite all this, I didn’t hate the film. In fact, I sort of enjoyed it, in a brainless way. With Spike on board, it should have had a meatier message. But on face value, this is a robber vs. negotiator film that’s pretty good. Wouldn’t watch it again. Didn’t change my life. But it killed a couple of hours. It makes a rating of 7.

5th April 06 - The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

No matter how many times they said his name, I still can’t pronounce Melquiades. But this doesn’t matter too much, because the majority of cretins haven’t heard of this film, and the few who have can understand if you say "that Tommy Lee Jones film, The Three Burials" and then mumble something Spanish. Anyway, the first cinema trip in two months, and a refreshing film to kick off my return with. Three Burials is a ‘Western’ in theory, but set in the present day (clue: mobile phones and celebrity magazines) and with cowboys but not Indians. Plus I liked it, and I rarely like Westerns. They’re all the same. Little towns, Clint Eastwood (with his squinty little eyes, or “acting”) a shoot out, the end. I know that’s a generalisation, but that’s how my young eyes see them.

Anyway, the first half is a jumbled mix of scenes, jumping back and forth without using ‘visual cues’ like different colour tones aka many other films that jump back and forth. A lesser person may have had trouble understanding which scene belonged where. However, I found this approach intriguing, a sort of Pulp Fiction-esque style that wasn’t hugely necessary, but made the simple story have more depth, as I gradually added more information to the plot that was forming in my brain. The second half straightens out into a normal narrative structure. And what a strange narrative. At times amusing, sometimes affecting, there’s shots of humanity (very generous humanity at that) and beautiful scenery and clippity clop horses. And it ends without a massive resolution. It reminded me of a scene from Adaptation (one of my favourite films) where Charlie Kaufman says he wants to create a film where there’s no character arcs. Apart from Mike Norton (Barry Pepper – the creepiest looking person in the world) who sort of learns a lesson, though it’s a pretty easy lesson to learn (random shooting is bad, m’kay) no one else really changes. This I like. I’m fed up of neat films (Crash – ooo we’re all racist but we’re really good at our hearts and we learn beautiful lessons and we’re up our own LA arses) and this was just simple. Different enough to be interesting, but simple enough not to piss me off.

My one gripe is with ‘Pete’ (Tommy Lee Jones, with big sad puppy eyes). I don’t know much about Pete, or why he did what he did, or if he’s a little bonkers, or why he’s a little bonkers. It gives him an air of mystery, yes, but I couldn’t connect with his character in any way. He was just a blank space to me. I was waiting for something to give me more of a hint of who he really was. There were little nuggets, but just too small to be satisfying. But, I’ve sat and thought about him. And films that make me think are generally good. So that’s my opinion. Three Burials is generally good. It makes the magic rating of 8.

And so into 2006...

It's the end of March and I've seen 5 films at the cinema. Pathetic. A foot operation has rendered me immobile, thus missing the entire Oscar season (secretly grateful, otherwise I'd have spent two months being morbidly depressed)

As my cinema days approach once more, I'll recap briefly on the start of the year.

7th Jan 06 - March of the Penguins (7)
Look at the little penguins. I do think they're cute. And oh, they fell over. Ha ha. This is a documentary along the same lines of the recent BBC series Planet Earth. It's stunning to look at, but the information content is a tad sparse. What was that big thing that just attacked the babies? Oh, you're not going to say. Ok. (Luckily I'm incredibly knowledgable when it comes to topics like this, so I can guess albatross)
This film was 'nice', probably difficult and cold to film, but I didn't come away knowing anything more, and was entertained for a short while. You can't see the facial expression I'm making, but imagine eating something very sour, while being patronising to a small child.

11th Jan 06 - Brokeback Mountain (7.75)
Ah Jake. Lovely Jake. Yeah, Heath played it well, even when he was being affectionate he was rough and gruff and mumbly like a big bear. But lovely Jake with his lovely little grin. Branded 'the gay cowboy movie', it pulls away from the labels almost immediately. You can see the love between these two. The fact they're both men loses its novelty, and you're left with one of those very long, drawn out, crushingly depressing tragic love stories, that I usually hate. If I wanted my despair to be very slowly dragged across time I'd employ someone to follow me everywhere and mutter 'you will die someday' into my ear every five minutes. So, this is why, what is essentially a 'good film' (albiet a little too long) doesn't score the magic 8. I just don't like films like this that much.

25th Jan 06 - Jarhead (7.5)
Ah Jake. Lovely Jake. More importantly - Jake in a santa thong. He's bald and beefy and struggling to cope with the violence that's been trained into him, and that's used for narthing. Usual army training scenes with shouty guys doing shouty things, and it looks like hell but the shouty ones do it because it's their life. What saves this from being another bloody war film is that its focus is purely on the mental effects on the soldiers, before and after. It won't blow you away, but it ain't half bad, and you see Jake in the shower.

1st Feb 06 - A Cock and Bull Story (8)
Some might say this film is so far up its own arse you can't even see anything except a little tiny dot of light in the middle of the screen. Thankfully, because I'm so far up my own arse, I saw this film in its entirety. The comparison between Steve Coogan and his character is all too clear in my poncey analyst eyes, and with that in mind this film makes for a bold, different take. Sometimes amusing, but not an out-and-out comedy, I found this to be a refreshing attempt at something new. Imagine!

8th Feb 06 - Munich (8)
Being the last cinema venture before I was in a different type of theatre (the operating kind) I decided to opt for a jolly tale. Long and brutal and unclear. Yep, that's my idea of jolly. I watched this film with unease, not because of the frank violence, but because I could tell my brain would be a'thinking afterwards. Trouble was, I didn't have time to be a'thinking during, because there were too many other things going on. This is a dark film that digs up everything you thought about terrorism and makes you sit and ponder it and the people involved. I wasn't alive when this all happened, so I didn't know very much about it. I still don't, really. I'm not entirely sure why these two groups were fighting, but, as this film suggests, did they?

Top 10 of 2005

In no particular order (because they're different genres, therefore you can't lump them together) these are the top ten films I saw at the cinema in 2005.

1. Team American: World Police
2. The Woodsman
3. Sin City
4. Batman Begins
5. War of the Worlds
6. The Descent
7. A History of Violence
8. Serenity
9. Nightwatch
10. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Watch them all now and tell me I'm wrong.

Film 2005

In 2005 I saw 41 films at the cinema. Not bad. Not a film a week, though. Because a full review would bore you (and me) to tears, this is a round-up of all the films I saw, the rating I gave each out of 10 at the time of viewing, and a summary sentence.

5th Jan 05 - Napoleon Dynamite (7.75 )
Amusing, slightly pointless, better on second viewing.

12th Jan 05 - The Aviator (8)
Epic, should have won an oscar, DiCaprio is excellent.

19th Jan 05 - Team America World Police (8.5)
Hilariously stupid, mindless entertainment. Class.

26th Jan 05 - Ocean's Twelve (6)
Not a patch on Eleven, badly acted, painful.

2nd Feb 05 - Closer (5.5)
A stage play that doesn't adapt well to screen, with unrealistic dialogue.

9th Feb 05 - Vera Drake (6)
Oh God, not oscar season. Well acted, but fairly loose on plot and so, so dreary.

16th Feb 05 - Sideways (8.5)
Breath of fresh air, amusing although a tad slow in places. Better on second viewing.

18th Feb 05 - Ray (8.5)
Captivating performance and story, though the rise and fall thing can get a bit tiresome.

23rd Feb 05 - Million Dollar Baby (8)
Oscar fodder. Boo hoo, let's have terrible things happen so Clint can squint and look sad.

2nd March 05 - The Life Aquatic (7.75)
Refreshing change from oscar blues. Unusual. Just missing something to get it to 8.

16th March 05 - The Woodsman (8)
Superbly acted by Kevin Bacon, should've won an oscar. Uncomfortably fantastic.

23rd March 05 - The Machinist (8)
Disturbing, intruiging, might lose it at the finish, but Bale is impressive as a skeleton.

30th March 05 - Constantine (6)
Only teenage boys know what's going on in this confusing mess that should've been more fun.

6th April 05 - Melinda and Melinda (6)
The drama wasn't dramatic, the comedy wasn't funny. Clunky dialogue. Disappointing.

13th April 05 - The Assissination of Richard Nixon (7.75)
Great acting, jarring finale. Good, but not enough depth to the story to make it to 8.

4th May 05 - Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (7.5)
Wanted to like it, but on retrospect would lower the score. Messy editing. And acting.

18th May 05 - Mean Creek (7.5)
Good crop of new actors, seen the story before though.

25th May 05 - The Jacket (7)
The writers didn't really know what they were doing. Interesting. Would be nice if there was a point.

8th June 05 - Sin City (8.5)
Visually fantastic. The story improves with second viewing.

22nd June 05 - Mr and Mrs Smith (7)
Brainless fun with pretty people.

29th June 05 - Batman Begins (8.5)
Dark, edgy, British. Takes the camp out of Batman and leaves him formidable and fantastic.

13th July 05 - War of the Worlds (8)
Fun, thrilling summer blockbuster. Enjoyable fluff, no matter what people say.

20th July 05 - The Descent (8)
Fabulously jumpy, claustrophobic, British horror. Ace.

2nd August 05 - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (7)
Colourful, Depp is fun, but strangely empty despite all the chocolate.

3rd August 05 - The Wedding Crashers (7)
Should've been much funnier, but a few scenes bump it up to 7.

10th August 05 - Herbie: Fully Loaded (7.25)
Don't care if it's kid's crap - fun, fun fun.

17th August 05 - Crash (7.75)
Oscar 06 winner. Yes, racism, very good. But too polished to be truely affecting.

24th August 05 - Unleashed (7)
Good premise, good fights, but loses it somewhere in all the silliness.

31st August 05 - The Island (7)
Two McGregors. Fab. But Bay needs to cut the chase scenes. We get it.

14th Sep 05 - Green Street (7)
Dodgy accents aside, grittyish drama. Made me want to start a gang.

21st Sep 05 - Wolf Creek (7)
Disappointed. After all the good reviews, not scary enough. But the characters were well-developed.

28th Sep 05 - Howl's Moving Castle (7.5)
Bizarre, interesting, bit too long.

4th October 05 - A History of Violence (8)
Viggo is excellent. It's a simple story that's been twisted to unearth some interesting ideas about violence.

12th October 05 - Serentiy (8)
I'm a Whedon fan. Good dialogue, good characters, good action, good story. It's dead good.

19th October 05 - Nightwatch (8)
Choppy, dirty horror with fab effects and wibbly story. Can't wait for the next one.

26th October 05 - Lord of War (7.5)
Good premise, Cage is usual sardonic self. Makes you think and then be depressed.

9th November 05 - Corpse Bride (7)
Burton dissapoints again. Good, but just no Nightmare Before Christmas.

16th November 05 - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (8)
Confirms Downy Jr is a stupendous actor. Funny, dry, needs to be seen again and again.

30th November 05 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (7.5)
Best one so far, but the books are getting too big to transfer competently on to film.

21st December 05 - King Kong (8)
Jackson should've let go and cut half an hour, but there's no denying some of the set pieces are bloody fantastic.

28th December 05 - The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (8)
Not Lord of the Rings, but still enjoyable, with non-irritating kids, fabulous effects and a solid story to back it all.