Children of teh Atom

bristle-krs

post about films you've seen this year - at the pictures, on vid, zum interweb ect...

Antz
Existential, angsty ant (Woody Allen) battles against conformity, militarism and other bad stuff

Wonderland
Michael Winterbottom’s story of one extended family reduced down into the events of a few days, and anchored around the lives of three sisters, theirs hopes, fears, disappointments. Characters behave in a stilted way, sometimes predictable, sometimes not, are sometimes likable and sometimes not; but it’s engrossing despite its banality. A film that almost makes me like London. Has a great cast of actors who work well together - Gina McKee, Molly Parker, Shirley Henderson as the sisters, Ian Hart, Stuart Townsend, John Simm, Jack Shepherd, Kika Markham etc.

Machibuse (Ambush At Blood Pass)
Hiroshi Inagaki directs Toshiro Mifune and Shintaro Katsu in a tale of a wandering masterless samurai, a shipment of gold, an ambush and a whole load of double-crossing. Worth catching.

Blazing Saddles
Mel Brooks, Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, farting, genius.

Bure Baruta (Cabaret Balkan)
Director Goran Paskaljevic and screenwriter Dejan Dukovski (adapting from his own play) weave together characters and happenings across in mid-90s, theoretically post-war Belgrade. There’s a lot of sadness, but some funny stuff too; sort of Robert Altman-goes-Slavic. Don’t go expecting a happy ending, though.

Battle Of The Bulge
Sluggish, historically-poor, all-star version of the Ardennes offensive, with the excellent Robert Shaw (evil nazi!!! boo hiss!!!), boring Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson and some other schmos

Stalag 17
Billy Wilder’s mighty POW camp fable: there’s a spy in the prison camp, but who is it?

M
Peter Lorre as a scary child killer being chased by the cops and by the criminal underworld

Things To Come
Top HG Wells-authored, beautifully-rendered pre-WW2 SF fable, predicting a war of terror powered by technology

D.O.A.
Poisoned accountant Edmond O'Brien tries to work out who has condemned him to death, and why...

Mr Moto's Last Warning
Inscrutable japanese policeman/secret agent foils a dastardly plot to drive a wedge between britain and france in the lead up to WW2

It Happened Here
Haven’t seen this in years, very tricky to get hold off (well, I say that, but it is on BFI video), got it by mistake, thinking it was ‘Went The Day Well?’

Anyway, it’s an amateur movie which was made over the course of I think 7 years, by military historian Andrew Mollo and film buff Kevin Brownlow, based on the what-if..? premise that the nazis had beaten britain; dirty, gritty, grim, with little narrative plot, we follow one woman around britain, from her evacuation out of Shrewsbury as partisans/terrorists wage low intensity war with the heroic Germanic protectors/nazi invaders, to her life in London and beyond. difficult to do this justice without saying what happens, and as not that much actually happens, i think that would spoil it. but it really is worth your time.

Talvisota (The Winter War)
Unrelenting picture of war, focusing on a citizen-soldier reserve unit called up to the front during the 3 month Finno-Soviet Winter War of 1939-40. not much happens except battle after battle, counter-attack after attack, death, destruction, maiming and freezing cold weather. similar to ‘Stalingrad’ in its less-than-romantic picture of war, and its refusal to shape itself into a convenient story arc.

Evil Aliens
Jake ‘Razor Blade Smile’ West returns to the campy, cheap-but-well-executed horror/schlock vein, and bleeds it dry in this rather spunky scifi comedy about trash telly, UFO geeks and alien invasions.

Tabloid hackette Emily Booth and her TV crew investigate a Welsh woman who claims aliens killed her boyfriend and impregnated her... Plenty of fake blood, some rather good FX, doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Could do with tighter, faster editing, some more character development at the beginning, and maybe some slightly better acting in parts, but for what it is, it’s good stuff.

Borrows heavily from: ‘Evil Dead’, ‘Shaun Of The Dead’, 70s british sex comedies, ‘Predator’, ‘Alien’/’Aliens’, most war movies ever, ‘Die Hard’.

9-Ya Rota (9th Company)
The Russian ‘Platoon’ or ‘Full Metal Jacket’, based around a bunch of paras sent to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war. Dehumanising haircut scene? Check. Brutal training? Check. sensitive, romantic, naîve central character gets ideas challenged by horrors of war? Check. Pretty good (nice photography) but a bit laboured and empty imo.

A Midnight Clear
A small squad of GIs is sent to a forward position to watch out for the impending German offensive in the winter of 1944. A film with heart, this one, about survival and fear and with not a hint of bloodlust.

Ethan Hawke, Frank Whaley, Peter Berg, Arye Gross, Kevin Dillon and Gary Sinise make a great ensemble, John C McGinley does a great arsehole of an officer, veteran German actor Curt Loewens makes a suitably war-weary veteran German soldier.

Bad Day At Black Rock
John Sturges classic - 81 minutes of cinematic purity - it’s all in the reveal, all in the tension. Dialogue that seems to suit the characters rather than the audience. A plot which is both simple and yet also only gradually unwrapped. Pitch-perfect performances (bar one - you’ll spot the turkey straight out).

World War Two has ended, a train drops off a stranger at some dusty Midwest whistlestop, the locals are mistrustful... Sort of an in-reverse precursor to the samurai westerns that begat western samurai flicks. Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and Walter Brennan are all excellent.

Manhunter
The best of the Thomas Harris film adaptations IMO (second: ‘Black Sunday’), a well-lit, well-photographed version of ‘Red Dragon’ with William Petersen as former FBI psychological profiler Will Graham brought out of a retirement caused by a breakdown following his pursuit and capture of Hannibal Lec(k)tor, in order to track down another serial killer, the ‘Tooth Fairy’.

Some peeps say it’s an emotionally cold film, but I’ve never figured that out, I think it’s pretty decent and unglossy. Nice use of music too. Love Tom Noonan as the psycho, and Dennis Farina as the Fed too. The sleeping tiger and Will meeting Hannibal are my favourite scenes.

Troy
On one level this Hollywood blockbuster version of the siege & fall of Troy is fairly enjoyable, but there’s plenty that grates. The script is fair awful, there’s no gods, loads of the canonical mythology is arse-over-tit, and there seems little or no direction for the actors. Eric Bana does okay as Hektor, Brian Cox was a suitably unpleasant Agamemnon, but with so many characters and so much plot to rattle through, too much of the time it’s just a blancmange of mugging fools.

The scene: It’s night time. The Greek army is subdued, having failed to breach Troy’s mighty walls. Odysseus is sitting round a campfire, brooding over his friend Achilles and his feud with Agamemnon, and concerned at the impenetrability of Troy. He, like many of the Greek leaders, seems resigned to a long and bloody war of attrition, and possible failure. But then he turns round, and sees one of his men carving a toy for his son back home. It’s a little horse... CLUNK! Barely one step short of having Odysseus stroke his chin, look wistfully into the sky and mutter “Now that gives me an idea...”

The Lion Of The Desert
The story of the guerrilla war fought by Omar Mukhtar against the Italian invasion of Libya which began in 1911, and of the Fascist General sent to crush the rebellion. Anthony Quinn and Oliver Reed chew scenery like bulimics eat chocolate; it’s no ‘Lawrence Of Arabia’ but it’s better than ‘Troy’. FASCINATING FACT!!! Colonel Gaddaffi bankrolled the production! ANOTHER FASCINATING FACT!!! The producer/director, Moustapha Akkad, was killed in a hotel bombing in November 2005 in Amman, Jordan.

Jin-Rô
An anime addition to the ‘Kerberos’ cycle, which posits a Germanicised Japan developing in an alternate history version of the postwar period. Panzer Cop Kazuki Fuse hesitates to shoot a child carrying a bomb during a riot, and ends up in all sorts of bother. Some serious twists and turns in this one, all about different police departments vying for control, identity and loyalty. Downbeat shizzle. But I enjoyed it.

World Trade Center
Rather sickly flag-waver about two Port Authority cops who get trapped in the rubble of the Twin Towers, the ordeal of their families, and the effort to find them and dig them out. Oliver Stone sets phasers to ‘mawkish’. Nicolas Cage does his emoting face; Michael ‘The Shield’ Peña is less annoying.

Insomnia (2002)
Good but not great Hollywood remake of Erik Skjoldbjærg’s ace arctic noir from five years earlier, relocated from Norway to Alaska, and replacing cold-hearted cop Stellan Skarsgård with Al Pacino. The set-up’s the same: there’s been a brutal murder of a local girl, and the local flatfoots have called in a more experienced big city detective to cast his eye over the evidence... But he’s got other things on his mind, and soon these - and the never-ending days - lead to him making big errors of judgement. Hilary Swank doesn’t fit in at all; Robin Williams attempts to play against type. A decent enough effort from Christopher Nolan but not a patch on ‘Memento’ - though the washed-out colours and photography are excellent. Shame the ending was changed.

Le Dernier Combat (The Last Battle)
Early Luc Besson joint, set in some undefined post-apocalyptic present day/recent past/near future world. It’s essentially a black and white silent movie, and it follows for the most part one man as he wanders around. Jean Reno plays a brute. This is the one with the chaps sleeping in cars, btw. For once there are some interesting comments on the IMDb boards.

The Wizard Of Oz
FFS it’s ‘The Wizard Of Oz’. Ruby slippers, Kansas, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, witches, munchkins, coked-up teen lead, B&W (well, sepia) and glorious technicolor. “Fly, my pretties!”

Conan The Barbarian
Arnie is a pissed-off swordsman with an axe to grind against frog-faced snake cult leader James Earl Jones. Fun for all the family. Some great fight scenes. Takes itself seriously.

Half Nelson
An inspirational history teacher with a hidden drug habit. His junior school student who discovers his secret. Their friendship. No contrived ending. Perfick - the best American flick I’ve seen since ‘25th Hour’. Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps are both excellent, as are all the supporting cast, in particular Anthony Mackie; Broken Social Scene’s score works very well; debut director Ryan Fleck does a fine, no frills job.

Children Of Men
Some people seem to really hate this, but I was really impressed, I scored it a full 10 on IMDb. It’s a post-apocalyptic set-up - a near future police state Britain, in a world struck low by infertility and much else. Clive Owen is a civil servant who is dragged into a dangerous venture involving a terrorist conspiracy/people’s revolution. Michael Caine gives a decent performance. Excellent sound and photography and amazing choreography, director Alfonso Cuarón should feel proud of the job he did here. I don’t want to say much about the plot, because I think it’s worth going into blind - several of the scenes really took me by surprise, Cuarón seems to have figured out how to direct counter-intuitively, away from the clichés, so it’s not like the stock situations you’d find in, say, a standard teen slasher. He works in a more heightened, natural film grammar. A special mention has to go to the set dressing - very real, bleeding into the story, and cutting down on the amount of exposition needed.

Gods And Generals
A not-particularly enjoyable take on the early years on the American Civil War, directed by Ronald F Maxwell and based on a novel by Jeffrey Shaara - sortof a prequel to ‘Gettysburg’. Lots of stilted speeches masquerading as dialogue, and large battle scenes that whilst possibly impressive to people on the ground, just aren’t filmed very well or with any sense of scale. Robert Duvall is pretty good as General Lee, Stephen Lang (the sleazy supermarket tabloid hack from ‘Manhunter’!) is very watchable as Stonewall Jackson. Difficult to take seriously if you’ve seen ‘CSA: Confederate States Of America’.

Land Of The Blind
Very stagey, rather limited-in-vision political parable-cum-satire. Tom Hollander is a cruel fascistic dictator who has playwright-revolutionary Donald Sutherland imprisoned; Ralph Fiennes is the gaoler who acts as a fulcrum. Pessimistic, heavy-handed, but well acted and well shot; it just looks a bit meagre. No less subtle than, say, ‘American Dreamz’, and I liked that; but a less convincing film dialectic than ‘Half Nelson’.

Kingdom Of Heaven
Ridley Scott gives good epic - I reckon this one’s better than ‘Gladiator’. Orlando Bloom is darn decent as a sad-hearted widower who ends up in Jerusalem during the Crusades. He finds not salvation of the soul but instead corporeal intrigue and base human behaviour. Some very good supporting roles, several of them satisfyingly short-lived, and impressively staged big set-piece battles. Whilst Scott sort of mangles the specifics of history, he does it to make the broader strokes more understandable, so we’ll let him off on that count.

Dekalog (Piec)
The original one-hour version of ‘A Short Film About Killing’ by Krzysztof KieÊlowski; cinematographer Slawomir Idziak provides excellent washed-out yellows and browns. This episode from KieÊlowski’s ten commandments-based ‘Dekalog’ series focuses on ‘thou shalt not kill’, and contrasts the illegal, near-motiveless murder of a taxi driver by a young drifter with his subsequent legal, state-sanctioned execution. Not a happy picture.

Red Sonja
Okay, I recant, it’s a heap of shit

Definitely a film that works better when you watch it as a hormone-addled teen than as an adult with taste. Brigitte Nielsen is awful, Arnie waddles around like a muscle mary with roid rage, there’s an annoying ‘Temple Of Doom’-style brat, and Richard Fleischer directs with all the enthusiasm of an arthritic suffering from ME. Sandahl Bergman and Ronald Lacey do alright as the villains.

Per Un Pugno Di Dollari/A Fistful Of Dollars
Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood & Ennio Morricone prove a worthy match for Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune & Masaru Satô in this transposition of an Eastern ronin fable into a Spaghetti Western. A saddle tramp rocks up into a lawless and dusty frontier town, split between rival factions, and offers his services as a hired gun to each gang in turn, playing one off against the other. Good, punchy pace, memorable scenes, totally weatherproof movie

Per Qualche Dollaro In Più/For A Few Dollars More
Eastwood returns as another ‘Man With No Name’ wandering gunfighter, here in tentative bounty hunting alliance with Lee Van Cleef’s Colonel against a bunch of marauding bandits. Not as fun or exciting as ‘Fistful’.

Il buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (The Good, The Bad And The Ugly)
The pinnacle of the Leone/Eastwood/Morricone relationship, with Clint joined by Eli Wallack and Lee Van Cleef on the hunt for payroll gold during the American Civill War. Fantastic locations, perfect composition and a tight script all help to pull it together as a classic of cinema.

Return Of The Seven
Horrible retread of John Sturges’s Kurosawa-teefing ‘Magnificent Seven’, with a rebooted cast of guns-for-hire who barely gel together against some dastardly Mexican overlord, or something.

Once Upon A Time In Mexico
Glossy, well-shot, terribly acted, rubbishly edited, barely scripted revisitation of the Mariachi character by Robert Rodriguez. Lots of bangs, very few on target. Antonio Banderas is alright, I guess, Johnny Depp is okay in the same way he was okay in ‘Sleepy Hollow’, but it’s pretty much wasted opportunity all the way through.

A Better Place
Kevin Smith’s mate Vincent Periera’s low budget movie about high school outsiders. It’s not terrible, it’s just a lot less good than many View Askewniverse fanboys seem to think it is. After his dad dies, Californian teen Bennet (Robert DiPatri) moves out to Jersey with his mom, and immediately finds himself outside the mainstream jock culture. He finds a friend (of sorts) in local weirdo misanthropist kid Ryan (Eoin Bailey, the writer from ‘Band Of Brothers’), they hang out, utter contrived dialogue, stuff happens, yadda yadda. Bailey’s very watchable. Overall reminded me of Hal Hartley’s ‘The Unbelievable Truth’ in terms of tone, pace, vision, acting etc.

Nochnoy Dozor/Night Watch
Big, loud, glossy MTV-style Russian modern day vampire/good versus evil epic. Thought it was rather rubbish. All the worst bits from Buffy knock-offs.

Obchod Na Korze/The Shop On Main Street
An excellent little film directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, about life in a small SLovakian town during a period of ‘Aryanisation’ during World War Two, when a puppet clerical fascist state was set up. It focuses on Tono Brtko (Jozef Kroner), an easygoing but poor carpenter who despite his more aspirational wife’s nagging enjoys his life of pottering about. However, his brother-in-law - a fascist functionary and not a man he likes - throws him a googly: the new regime is taking business out of the hands of Jews, so how would he like to take over old Mrs Lautmann’s sewing shop? He agrees, and so we set off on the bumpy journey to resolution, and it’s not a pretty one. Along the way, though, we get to enjoy a marvellous relationship develop between Tono and Mrs Lautmann (Ida Kaminska), who seems to have no conception of all the turmoil around her (she thinks Tono is there as a helper), in no small part due to her deafness. Even though you know it’s about a grave subject, it is so beautifully constructed and structured that when it shifts in tone from the knockabout humour of the first two-thirds into the deadly serious final act, it shocks you, makes you shout at the characters. Definitely a film which emphasises that tragedy is not defined by numbers or scale, but by the very personal, very small individual actions and betrayals.

Red Dragon
Brett Ratner refilms the Thomas Harris novel, with Ed Norton, Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Fiennes supplanting William Petersen, Brian Cox and Tom Noonan from ‘Manhunter’. It feels a bit weird in places, because whilst this version includes some scenes omitted from ‘Manhunter’ (including a different ending), a lot of the time the dialogues is the same, or very similar. I didn’t enjoy it as much.

The Silence Of The Lambs
Jonathan Demme directs Jodie Foster as FBI rookie Clarice Starling, placed as bait before nutty professor Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to try and get some clues to the identity of serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Some nice acting in places, but overall feels overrated. Some painfully out of place humourous/lighthearted bits too (the butterfly geeks). Hopkins not as good as Cox.

Hannibal
Lecter is lose in Italy, pursued by rich pervert Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), a man horribly disfigured by Hannibal many years previously. Julianne Moore takes over as Starling, now a fully fledged fed, but one under a dark cloud thanks to a botched drugs bust. Ridley Scott directs with a painter’s eye, it’s IMO more enjoyable that SOTL, but still, it sort of lacks something. And I can’t stand Hopkins’ mugging.

Lord Of War
The story of the rise and fall of Ukrainian-American arms dealer Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage). Kind of enjoyable to start with, then gets very tedious. Too many clichés in search of a meaning. Similar in flavour to, say, ‘Layer Cake’ by way of ‘Scarface’.

No Man’s Land
Unpretensious, pretty zippy little amoral crime thriller - Charlie Sheen is Ted Varrick, a rich kid involved in a stolen Porsche racket, DB Sweeney (the poor man’s Andrew McCarthy) is Benjy Taylor, the young cop sent in undercover to infiltrate his gang as mechanic Bill Ives. Naturally things don’t go according to plan, etc. Randy Quaid is the Lieutenant (‘who wants results NOW’) investigating Varrick, Lara Harris is Varrick’s sister, who falls in love with Ives/Taylor.

Deathwatch
Fairly decent but not great supernatural WW1 flick - a bunch of Tommies get cut off in a forward German trench during a big offensive on the Western Front, only for their small band to be whittled down by a mysterious presence. Sort of a muddier ‘The Keep’, with a hint of ‘Fiends Of The Eastern Front’ atmosphere. Jamie Bell is the young kid who lied about his age to join up and is now regretting it, Hugo Speer is the fatherly NCO (“Don’t call me sir, I’m a sergeant - I work for a living”), Andy Serkin is the psychopathic squaddie, Lawrence Fox is the ineffectual upper class officer, etc. See also Kris Marshall of ‘My Family’/BT HomeHub ad fame whacking off to looted German porn.

Stark Raving Mad
Seann William Scott leads an oddball team on a heist under cover of a loud party. Not a classic but fun - Lou Diamond Phillips is a tasty villain.

You, Me And Dupree
Slacker man-child Owen Wilson lodges with newly wed best pal Matt Dillon and his wife Kate Hudson. Michael Douglas convinces as an arsehole dad-in-law. Light but enjoyable.

The Guardian
Aquatic ‘Heartbreak Ridge’ with washed up Coast Guard rescue swimmer Kevin Costner atoning for his guilt over the death of his best friend by being a bit mean but then becoming a mentor to hotshot new recruit Ashton Kutcher. A bit, well, dull.

The Prestige
I thought this might be a corker - two Victorian magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale - doing his best gorblimey voice, cf ‘Reign Of Fire’) battle over conjuring tricks - but despite some interesting themes, it didn’t really mesh together. A shame, and Christopher Nolan’s best effort.

Flushed Away
Aardman/Dreamworks computer animated feature about Roddy, an upscale pet rat (Hugh Jackman), who is washed down into the sewers where he meets ebony-to-his-ivory free range rodent Rita (Kate Winslet), opposites-attract stylee. Meanwhile an evil Toad (Ian McKellen) plots to wipe out his rodine nemeses and replace them with his own spawn. Good larks with some dirty jokes too, which is always a bonus.

Employee Of The Month
Slacker budget supermarket ‘box boy’ Dane Cook takes things easy till the arrival of a new cashier (Jessica Simpson) drives him into battle with champion tillmonkey Dax Shepard for the ‘employee of the month’ award. Shallow, breezy, and with a dubious message, but not awful, just not as good as ‘Dodgeball’.

Pierrepoint
Hangdog Timothy Spall as Britain’s last hangman Albert Pierrepoint. Not exactly laugh-a-minute, but watchable.

Lost In Translation
Two Americans adrift in Tokyo (Scarlet Johansson as a colllege graduate unsure of her future, twiddling her thumbs whilst her photographer husband works, and Bill Murray, a past-it Hollywood star making adverts for stupid money) find solace in a platonic relationship. Pretty good stuff I thought.

The Village
M Night Shyamalan’s fourth feature, an Amish-like rural community is held in thrall by mysterious animal mutilations, yadda yadda yadda. Beautiful photography and sound, some fine performances (Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard), just a bit of a see-through twist and a not very thorough structure.

Jesus’ Son
A funny little film about a wandering fuck-up, the perfectly monickered Fuckhead (Billy Crudup), getting into drugs, falling in love with Samantha Morton and trying to clean up in early 70s America. No real plot, but no pretensions either. A feelgood relation to ‘Requiem For A Dream’. Jack Black, Dennis Hopper and Denis Leary all have decent little parts.

Heat
Watched this again because I was bored, and it does drag - three hours of De Niro and Pacino moaning about how hard they got it, one a thief, the other a cop. But hey, it’s still got some great set pieces (the opening armoured car robbery, the attempted sale of the bearer bonds back to Van Zant, the bank heist, tracking down Waingro) and a hardworking cast (Tom Sizemore, a non-annoying Val Kilmer, Diane Venora, Natalie Portman, Amy Brenneman). And Michael Mann knocks together some top visuals, and no complaints on the sound and editing fronts either.

Dazed And Confused
Richard Linklater retcons ‘Slacker’ back to 1976, to the last day of school in some Austin suburb, where the kids are looking forward to a long summer and a party to kick it off. Tasty little ensemble includes Ben Affleck, Jason London, Joey Lauren Adams, Matthew McConaughey, Cole Hauser, Adam Goldberg, Marissa Ribisi and Rory Cochrane; there’s paddling, underage drinking, kegs, driving around and other stuff. The 90s ‘American Grafitti’ would be the pigeonhole, I reckon.

Simple Men
Hal Hartley pitches two brothers who have little in common together in their search for the father they don’t really know. Duller than even that sounds. Robert Burke is sort of alright in it.

BBS: The Documentary
Top 8-part documentary (released under Creative Commons licensing) about the rise and fall of dial-up bulletin boards, and of the cultures that grew up around them, structured around interviews with many of the people involved in creating, operating and using them. Interesting stuff, with plenty of meat to chew on. It’s a bit variable in sound and picture quality, but still very good.

The Hebrew Hammer
The first Jewsploitation flick, with Adam Goldberg as a semitic superhero-cum-private (circumcised) dick, tasked with saving Hannukah from the demonic plans of Santa’s evil son. A good lark, nothing spectacular, in a similar vein to ‘Drop Squad’.

Chinatown
The classic modern noir - Jack Nicholson as private eye Jake Gittes, chasing after water in 30s LA. Directed by Roman Polanski from Robert Towne’s script, if you’ve seen it you know it’s good; if you haven’t, there’s no point in explaining what happens.

The Two Jakes
Sequel to ‘Chinatown’, Towne delivers the script, Nicholson directs. This time round the plot’s built over oil reserves beneath LA in the 40s; it’s got Harvey Keitel, Meg Tilly and Madeleine Stowe, there’s a pleasantly confusing plot, and it’s rather imaginately shot by Nicholson; it’s just not as good as its precursor.

Zemlya (Earth)
A 1930 silent film by Olexandr Dozhenko about farmers in the Ukraine and the debate over agricultural collectivisation. It’s not really a barrel of laughs - some old chap dies at the beginning, there are some nattily-dressed kulaks, a new tractor arrives in the village, a young chap is killed. Very static, some strange (to mine modern eyes) set-ups (like the back of someone’s head when they’re talking), didn’t really dig it, though apparently it’s a masterpiece. Bloody awful subtitles on this version too: “Well I’ll be a sonuvabitch - them fellows are real class!”

The Bourne Identity
Matt Damon is surprisingly effective as the angsty, amnesiac CIA hitman being hunted down by his former employers for botching a job - some very exhilarating action sequences (like the punch-up in the US consulate), and a satisfyingly opaque plot which unravels at its own pace. Franka ‘Lola Rennt’ Potente is two thumbs as the Euro-flake Bourne hooks up with.

The Bourne Supremacy
An actually rather tasty sequel, which builds on the first flick and takes it somewhere different - this time directed by Paul Greengrass, who brings a more documentary-flavoured feel to the visuals (less still, slightly fuzzy, unusually lit), and yet still demonstrates a painter’s eye to shape, composition and movement in scenes like the struggle between Bourne and a fellow Treadstone operative in an antiseptically minimalist Munich house.

The Transporter
Jason Statham is an ex-pat living in France, who has a sideline as a driver-for-hire to various elements of the underworld. A great film trying its damnedest to struggle out from beneath its mediocre execution. It starts out quite stylised, but believable in its own bubble, then goes all 80s action thriller insane, and not in a good way. Some decent fight scenes, though, and Statham is good.

Dead Presidents
After the ghetto soap of ‘Menace II Society’, and before the travesty of ‘From Hell’, the Hughes brothers knocked out this tasty little period crime piece about a group of friends in the Bronx in the late 60s and then early 70s, with a little interlude in Nam in the middle. Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, N'Bushe Wright and Bokeem Woodbine are all effective players, Freddy Rodriguez (the chap from ‘Six Feet Under’) is a little overcooked, and Terrence Howard steals his scenes.

Dog Day Afternoon
“Based on a true story” heist flick, with chief robber Sonny (Al Pacino) full of nervous energy trying to keep things together inside the bank. Meanwhile, outside the power balance slips from the cosy incompetence of the local cops to the sinister menace of the smiling Feds, all whilst a full-on media circus parades its clowns and digs up Sonny’s own bearded lady. “Attica! Attica!”

Bugsy Malone
Best film musical ever - splurge guns, “wait a minute, I *am* Babyface”, Jodie Foster, “keep dose fingers pumpin’”, the Paul Williams score and lyrics, some fine, fine acting, impeccable lighting and beautiful photography.

The Rock
Far less than the sum of its parts - Nicolas Cage plays to his tic-laden strengths as the FBI chemical weapons boffin teamed up with Sean Connery’s special forces Man In The Iron Mask to infiltrate Alcatraz island, which has been taken over by grudge-bearing GI Joes. It’s ‘Die Hard 2’ with extra fat, iffy editing and indifferent direction. Oh hang on, that’s ‘Die Hard 2’ too. Oh well

Beverly Hills Cop III
Not as good as 1 but definitely better than 2 - Axel Foley hunts down his boss’s killers to a Californian theme park. Top ferris wheel scene, and some consciousness creeping in, sort of.

Cellular
The first 15 minutes of this convinced me it was going to be utter drivel - Kim Basinger as some sickly sweet school teaching soccer mom gets kidnapped, boo hoo, then you get hit with a sub-90210 strand about puke-inducing rich brats Chris Evans (no, not our one) and Jennifer Biel breaking up - but then it really kicked up a gear. Suddenly it starts reminding you of a modern Hitchcock. Of course, ultimately it’s not that good, but if you last out through the shit at the beginning, you will be rewarded. William H Macy’s soon-to-retire cop deserves more space to develop, though. Jason Statham is good as the leader of the kidnappers, if not so convincing as an American.

Crank
That Jason Statham gets around a bit, doesn’t he? Here he gets to keep his native tongue as a hitman in LA who gets injected with a superdrug which will kill him within hours. Instead of lying down and dying quietly (as various people suggest throughout), he gets mad and swears vengeance against those who sentenced him to death. It’s garish, brash and utterly likable, if you like that sort of thing. It’s also got a real screwball swing to it, especially in the scenes with his hippie girlfriend (Amy Smart) and his doctor (Dwight Yoakum).

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
William Goldman script? Impeccable. George Roy Hill’s direction? Perfect. Newman and Redford’s performances? Completely believable. Understanding that comedy works best leading into tragedy, the team that made this made a masterpiece - amoral, cowardly yet utterly likable and rational outlaws flee from the march of civilisation (and the law) into the wild west. “Who are those guys?”

Collateral
Cabbie Jamie Foxx picks up assassin Tom Cruise on a long night in LA. Could have been better than it was - some professional production and performances, but it lacks coherence. Cruise and Foxx on the footbridge is possibly my favourite scene, because it feels like a natural deadend, compared with the set-ups that happen before and after it, all of which push into twists, but which are each of them predictable. Not Michael Mann’s best, feels very much like a contract feature. LOL

London
Chris Evans and Jennifer Biel again, and again as an ex-couple. Oh, and, erm, there’s Jason Statham too... Syd (Evans) is hotheaded, jealous, and since the collapse of their relationship has sunken into drunk and drug-fuelled entropy. Then he discovers his ex, London (Biel) is leaving Manhattan to live with her new boyfriend in LA. So he decides to crash her leaving party, which is held at the appartment of Rebecca (Isla Fisher - Shannon from ‘Home And Away”!), who much like all of London’s other friends, seems to hate Syd. Anyway, to “clear his head” Syd has brought copious amounts of coke with him - along with the Wall Street trader/part-time drug dealer who sold it to him, Bateman (Statham). Syd and Bateman decamp to the bathroom to get cracking on the toot away from the disapproving eye of Rebecca, and play host to various visitors, whilst expounding on life, the universe and everything, with extra stops at god, love and pain, before Syd eventually ventures out to try and speak with London. All the while we jump back to see snatches of Syd and London’s relationship, to see why it fell apart. Very effectively done, with the minimum of pretensions. Round of applause all round.

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:10 pm Post subject:

*reserved*

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:10 pm Post subject:

*reserved*

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:10 pm Post subject:

*reserved*

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:11 pm Post subject:

*reserved*

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:11 pm Post subject:

*reserved*

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:11 pm Post subject:

*reserved*

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:11 pm Post subject:

*reserved*

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:12 pm Post subject:

think that should just about cover it

then my flicks are all in one place - who wants to reserve the next few posts for their film blog?

(idea being we can then potentially collate together charts next new year for our favourite films of the year

- or actually maybe you'd prefer to have individual threads? or maybe not at all? hmmm, the interweb is thine oyster, good plan krs, well thought out

:-/

)

wraeth · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:19 pm Post subject:

Nicely reserved thre Krzzle

I haven't seen many films except the other two star wars ones and pirates of the caribbean. Oh and fifth element

Ninjadmin · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject:

i'll just stick with one mega post (or give up by february more likely

my brother has this habit of watching 3 films at once so we see all the battles

bristle-krs · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:07 pm Post subject:

bloody kids of today, no attention span, national service, moan, whinge OH LOOK! A BADGER!!11!!

wraeth · Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:17 pm Post subject:

I don't like going to the pictures on my own and none of my rl mates ever seem to go much

Or at least with me

bristle-krs · Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 9:54 pm Post subject:

couple more i watched yesterday:

talvisota unrelenting picture of war, focusing on a citizen-soldier reserve unit called up to the front during the 3 month finno-soviet winter war of 1939-40. not much happens except battle after battle, counter-attack after attack, death, destruction, maiming and freezing cold weather. similar to ‘stalingrad’ in its less-than-romantic picture of war, and its refusal to shape itself into a convenient story arc.

evil aliens jake ‘razor blade smile’ west returns to the campy, cheap-but-well-executed horror/schlock vein, and bleeds it dry in this rather spunky scifi comedy about trashy tv, ufo geeks and alien invasions. tabloid hackette emily booth and her tv crew investigate a welsh woman who claims aliens killed her boyfriend and impregnated her... plenty of fake blood, some rather good effects, doesn’t take itrself too seriously. could do with tighter, faster editing, some more character development at the beginning, and maybe some slightly better acting in parts, but for what it is, it’s good stuff. borrows heavily from: ‘evil dead’, ‘shaun of the dead’, 70s british sex comedies, ‘predator’, ‘alien’/’aliens’, most war movies ever, ‘die hard’.

bristle-krs · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:18 am Post subject:

9-ya rota (9th company) the russian ‘platoon’ or ‘full metal jacket’, based around a bunch of paras sent to fight in the soviet-afghan war. dehumanising haircut scene? check. brutal training? check. sensitive, romantic, naîve central character gets ideas challenged by horrors of war? check. pretty good (nice photography) but a bit laboured and empty imo.

J · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 12:14 pm Post subject:

enuc por lavaigi Its about a young Serbian boy who has lost his father in the war. He leaves home in order to find his soul, as this is what the villagers tell him he needs, to become a true man. A couple of weird romantic bits and i dont get the part with the wolve and rolling pin.

bristle-krs · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:23 pm Post subject:

sounds pretty good - have you seen bure baruta/balkan cabaret? that one's a pretty decent crossed-paths flick set in belgrade on the eve of the nato bombings. pretty fucking downbeat mind.

a midnight clear a small squad of g.i.s is sent to a forward position to watch out for the impending german offensive in the winter of 1944. a film with heart, this one, about survival and fear and with not a hint of bloodlust. ethan hawke, frank whaley, peter berg, arye gros, kevin dillon and gary sinise make a great ensemble, john c mcginley does a great arsehole of an officer, veteran german actor curt loewens makes a suitably war-weary veteran german soldier.

bad day at black rock john sturges classic - 81 minutes of cinematic purity - it’s all in the reveal, all in the tension. dialogue that seems to suit the characters rather than the audience. a plot which is both simple and yet also only gradually unwrapped. pitch-perfect performances (bar one - you’ll spot the turkey straight out). world war two has ended, a train drops off a stranger at some dusty midwest whistlestop, the locals are mistrustful... sort of an in-reverse precursor to the samurai westerns that begat western samurais. spencer tracy, lee marvin, ernest borgnine, robert ryan and walter brennan are all excellent.

J · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:51 pm Post subject:

poor ole bristle, he fell for it

thats what happens when you dont click links

bristle-krs · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 10:04 pm Post subject:

damn you pesky kids

i had just fired up my post-45 war film list to amend my

hiccup · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 11:13 pm Post subject:

Pan's Labyrinth Dark fantasy/allegory set shortly after the end of the Spanish civil war. Some beautiful cinematography, but most definitely a fairy tale for adults. Some disturbing and graphic scenes of torture and brutality. Would like to see it again to try and pick up on some more of the paralells between the girls fantasy world and the real world she lives in. Discussing it today with Little Nellie, I'd have to agree that the main "baddie", the captian, is a somewhat one-dimensional character. One of the best films I've seen in ages, despite that.

Shaun of the Dead I'm sure this film needs no introduction here, but I watched it again tonight, and laughed a lot, despite the sense permeating it that Simon Pegg and all his mates are only a hairs breadth from sniggering at how funny they're all being. What I want to know is, when they're in his step-dad's car, why do they all get out of the car leaving him in it, rather than dragging him out of the car and then getting back in and driving off? That's what I want to know.

hiccup · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 11:18 pm Post subject:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Bit old, but I only saw it the other day. Interesting story about the consequences of being to selectively wipe your memory of selected events/people/etd, and why that is never going to be as simple and trouble-free as the characters hope. Was impressed with Jim Carrey, and it's refreshing to see Hollywood do something a bit imaginitive, but I wanted them to push it further and make it even weirder. The fact that the ending was predictable from pretty early on didn't help. Vastly better than most Hollywood films, enjoyed watching it, but reckon it could have been much better if the people making it had been a bit braver.

bristle-krs · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 11:53 pm Post subject:

hiccup · Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 12:11 am Post subject:

bristle-krs · Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 12:29 am Post subject:

tru say

J · Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:22 pm Post subject:

J · Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:24 pm Post subject:

did anyone see that film last night on bbc1 with dustin hoffman and jake gylanhall? Jake played a guy and his fiance has just been murdered, he's staying with their parents in a country town (set in the time of vietnam) and he falls in love with another girl. it was well good.

(I believe the film you mention is Moonlight Mile)

wraeth · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:54 am Post subject:

Nah I'm no good with telly tho saw final part of Man In the Moon tonight <goes off to google>

Watched 'Handful Of Dust' over the weekend. Typical Evelyn Waugh. So therefore Kristin Scott Thomas a 'must'. I do loves that Brideshead reminiscent shizzle though

Most unsatisfactory ending and the film dissolved into two - fine if it had reworked into one in the final chapter but no. Fizzled out with an 'eh?' Much like Waugh's novels tho so meh. Good watching then vaguely and inappropriately hastened disatisfactory ending. IMO

hiccup · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:22 am Post subject:

Linkizzles addizzled

wraeth · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 12:22 pm Post subject:

fankoo

wraeth · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:28 pm Post subject:

Belboid on MATB just gave me a link to a site that showed me how to make my dvd player multi region so I can watch some more of my films now - including The Lost Highway (recommended by Ninj, and wot I bought recntly)

Ninjadmin · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:40 pm Post subject:

lost highway is pretty ace

if you like david lynch it's probably the most david lynch fillum

wraeth · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:43 pm Post subject:

I might watch it this evening. Alison and i were pretty gutted when it wouldn't work at New Year - I'm really chuffed about this multi regional fix

Ninjadmin · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:50 pm Post subject:

is it easy?

put it in the links forum

wraeth · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:53 pm Post subject:

I managed to do it so it must be

Yeah, very easy. Each dvd player is different tho. Good idea - I'll nip over and do that now

hiccup · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 2:12 pm Post subject:

Are PS2s multiregion when it comes to playing DVDs I wonder?

The Doctor · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 2:14 pm Post subject:

Ninjadmin · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 2:18 pm Post subject:

don't bother hacking your ps2, my brother did it and he could only play hacked games, so he couldn't borrow or lend games with anyone

hiccup · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 2:20 pm Post subject:

My brother's got a chipped one and it's great. You can use dvd decrypter to copy games. He's got hundreds. Depends if it's a good chipping job or not I suppose.

I don't really play games on the one we've got, just watch DVDs on it.

bristle-krs · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 2:28 pm Post subject:

bristle-krs · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 2:30 pm Post subject:

i reckon ninja's brother could probably take hiccup's in a pub car park dust-up, but hiccup's bro would steam the geordie giant on a pub quiz machine