In a further act of online anal retention, i thought i might scoop up some of my Movie Tab quickies and slap em here too. Lord only knows why
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Ten Canoes - Loved every last honey-drop of humour and humanity. A heady-playful journey into an alternative time, culture and cinema-story. Plus it's fun
(You can even forgive the *****y subtitles - and the preponderance of ****-references too, if those things are liable to offend you
)
London (1994) - A thoughtful and floating 'poetry documentary' on London circa '94. Rambling, 'sketchy', yet sure-footed (both visually and 'narrationally'), it turns over a lot of stones. I never knew that some of the Jamaican 'Windrush' arrivals were stashed
under Clapham Common, or that the familiar iron railings seen around town are actually recycled WWII stretchers. All good - and you don't have to be a Londoner to dig the tone.
Blow - rewatched it with great ease. Depp's a good anchor for any shipwreck.
Sunshine - Watched it on a small screen, so can't judge the visuals properly (altho they did look reet swish). Story line was a scattered mess for me tho.
Pan's Labyrinth - Yas, a good'un. Bit weird centring a 15-rated film round a child's narrative and that, and the Fascist boss was a bit of a stock 'demon' in some ways. But good. Yas.
Borat (ect etec iksetyra) - Funniest horse tumble ever. (Was that spontaneous? It's all ruined if that weren't spontaneous
)
A Mighty Wind - Only turned up to 5-n-a-half. Improvised beige. (Liked the colostomy-sales-song at the end tho)
Tadpole - Sex and Voltaire eh? With added dufflecoats? Hmm.
Presented with the clunky pretentiousness of teen espousing philosophy (deliberately? not sure), this short tale of a 15-year-old's love/lust for his step mum is still a fine watch. The faffing around in French and the facile quotes are annoying, but everything else is handled with an accessible lightness of touch. Bebe Neuwirth, Weaver and Ritter are all class, and the book-bruised kid-lead does well n'all.
The People vs Larry Flint - The details are involving, the characters are large, the direction is suitably pulpy for the most part, and hey, Courtney Love plays a good junkie to round it all off
The Long Goodbye - Almost dreamlike mystery somehow composed of violence and realism. Liked it. Might get round to seeing some of Altman's later stuff eventually. (But hey, i've seen
Popeye, so i'm kinda 'replete' on that score
)
Man on the Moon - Carrey wasn't quite as good as i remembered him in this, but that's just coz Andy Kaufman seems to be such an inimitable loon. Great tale of another big personality tho - and i've been bingeing on YouTube clips of the real deal ever since
Unknown White Male - Meandering amateurish doc, but suitably so. It follows a 30-something ex-stock-broker who's mysteriously suffered complete 'retrograde' amnesia - and has become something of a 'man-child' hippy instead.
Made by a friend, the film's best moments touch on the confusion and emotional wrenches suffered by the subject, during his initial adjustment, and by his loved ones during their tougher journey towards accepting this new individual. It's slow, and not exactly the Sartre-on-cinefilm it sometimes wants to be, but intriguing none-the-less. (Some say the film's a fake, but i'm not so sure. At the end of the day tho, the phenomenon exists, and i dare say it probably pans out this way a lot. Except without the ex-stock-broker's bankroll to finance a new lifestyle
)
The Grifters - Low-key slinky number that smoulders plenty but never completely hits the spot. The leads are all pretty classy tho, and there's some decent suspended sentences, and pithy paybacks, along the way.
Cop land - Still the well-delivered slow-punch to the guts that i remembered. Bit cheesy in places but pretty unflinching in others. Shame Liotta goes into an over-acting spasm tho.
Night Watch - ultimately a daft horror/fantasy outing, but lovingly executed, and on a 'sub-Hollywood' budget too. Has enough little kinks and twists in the mix to keep it mainly intriguing-enough throughout. The playstation bits and the afterburn bus were firmly in the 'daft' category tho. Might go somewhere interesting in the trilogy as a whole, but more likely to be a Matrix burn-out all told.
Alien Resurrection - Revisited this a few times over the last few years, and haven't been disappointed. Not sure whether it's Weaver's alien-love-affair insistences, or some of the other devilish little twists in it, but i love nigh-on all the conceits. And it's good to see Jeunet applying his heartfelt brand of warm-dark-stylishness to this kind of realm.
Couple of chinks in the armour, and the occasional clanking sticking point, but it's still a pretty streamlined beast of a sci-fi flick overall.
(And dammit i got drawn into the first hour of
Infernal Affairs after that. They're evil, these revisitable films
)
Habla con Ella - My first Almodovar. Wasn't disappointed. Bizarre but grounded plot, high camp, strong female characters (even tho the main two spent most of their time in a coma). The 'hermitic' natures of the two male leads, and some curious motivations, might have made the plot a bit too disconnected, but there was a consistancy throughout somehow. Endearing despite the creepier aspects of the central plot.
A Letter to Three Wives (1949) - Well-handled ensemble piece with some verbal spark and pleasing performances. A fun little jaunt into small-town 'married strife'.
Me and You and Everyone We Know - A strange little doggy bag of 'art installation' nervous breakdowns and child voyages into the adult world.
In other words: it's quirky. And overall i enjoyed it - which sort of surprised me, as some of it was quite shrill, and other bits fairly trite. Perhaps it helped that there was some danger and groundedness lurking amongst its wandering clouds of fluff?
Ping Pong - A friendship. Ping pong. And - somewhere in the middle - a collaborative rivalry which may just bring out the best in everyone. (Will it? Well, you'll just have to watch and see
)
(NB - includes the standard chorus of embittered coaches and unstoppable nemesises - but still conjures a fresh and breezey take on the well-worn sporting genre
)
Enigma - Staid and a bit choppy in places, but in a thoroughly suitable way. A slow-burner overall, but a pretty decent one. And it almost manages to make mathmaticians sexy. Heavens.
Cypher - Reasonable slice of paranoid sci-fi twistiness that never unlocks any real magic. Worth a watch none-the-less.
Heat - Like a slick yet inept thief, this one always seems to grab my attention only to lose it. Repeatedly. For hours. That becomes very annoying. The finale works as a perfect summary of the film for me: It has tension and a nice little twist, but is also beset with lulls and ludicrous moments.
Ghost Dog - Erm 35%. A couple of nice conceits swamped by a flood of duff ones, and some made-for-tv standard execution. Waving a Rashomon novelette around does not a good film make.
Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing - Silly title, standard doc, but with some some earnest opinions and insights on display. The better talking-heads blew most of the fluff away.
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean - Fun shaggy bear story from the Wild West. Stands on its hindlegs, and scratches a few fleas. Revels in its absurdities.
Tis good.
Copenhagen - Yay, a TV dramatisation of a play about two physicists. Having quantum crisises. During WW2.
Excruciatingly badly done in places, and excruciatingly ambitious in others, but really interesting subject matter. If you want to know something about how the first nuclear arms race was won, and how it twisted up some of the individuals involved, then it's an involving peek through the looking glass.
On all other fronts, it's like being hit in the face with a manuscript.
Only Human - I'm no big fan of farce, but this one was a tour-de-force. I guess the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sitting in its Spanish heart helped a lot. Loved the political sparks in the final bathroom clash, but everything from the gun-toting Grandad to the multi-coloured relationship doubts and redemptive bouts was good.
As was the accusation of duck murder.
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great review 
