Golgot's Reviews

Heh, so it does. So it does.

Izo was funnier, though...

__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

What sex with corpses who still can't control the bowels isn't funny?

__________________

It's a bit broad for my tastes, like Airplane or Allo Allo.

I haven't seen Izo or Visitor Q yet. (I've got Audition sitting on my shelf, scaring me with its very presence. Haven't seen that yet either ). Only other ones i've seen of his are Bird People of China (thanks to Pyro again ) and the reasonable but conventional Yakuza flick Agitator.

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Yeah, i watched Agitator lately, nothing to write home about.

I'd watch Audition and Ichi The Killer together to get the more Western received Miike and then latter two you mentioned for the more intelligent (and shockingly twisted) Miike.

Hmmm, Audition's great and I haven't watched it in yonks (now soon to be remedied!).

I'd tip my hat to Mr Miike if I wasn't sitting indoors and actually wearing a hat.

And had an esteemed Japanese auteur sitting on my sofa dunking Hob Nobs into a mug of PG Tips.

That was yesterday.

I like Miike quite a bit. Audition and Ichi are still the only two of his films I've seen but I plan on seeing more. He's a trip. He seems to agree with me.

__________________
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

Persepolis

Starting out as Charlie Brown with nails in its hands, this deservingly-lauded animated autobiog continues to grow as it charts some troubled Iranian times. The recent decades of 'veiled multiculturalism' and 'cartoonish' ideology clashes are laid out with lovely accessibility, all viewed through the self-centered prism of a fairly-privileged kid and teen. The black moods and tones of petulant youth that flood through the emotional current are still stirred playfully by rocks of self-depreciating humour dropped into the mix, and deft flicks of the artist's wrist inking this avatistic story to life.






In Bruge

Grosse Pointe Blank asked what would happen if an assassin had a midlife crisis that took him back to his formative hometown life. In Bruge asks what would happen if two Irish assassins (one a rookie, the other an old hand) had midlife crises simultaneously. While marooned in a fairly foreign land.

Debauchery, carnage, gun play and chagrin are accompanied by dark spry humour and illuminated sins, all wrapped up in some wistful west-European light. Not so sure about some of the dark honour tracks it drags itself down (or the implausibilities that somehow seep in - having been well staved-off until the end). Still far more than 'reconstituted' goods this - with some crafty laughs and gut punches along the way.







Good Night, And Good Luck

I did like all the peeps into public nooks & crannies of the time that this McCarthyism chew-over provided. Without having lived through the time, or within its country-specific echoes, i can't say i can decide how successful a film it is, in a strange way. It's as personal as the broadcasts performed, never quite flooding over boundaries and pooling 'timeless' preoccupations the way All The President's Men managed to do, for example. Still a solid flick.

There Will Be Blood

Swaggering and intimidating. No movement wasted, and every key movement potent. Until the preacher starts flailing scrawny unconvincing limbs. And then keeps windmilling through the plot with an effervescent unreality every bit the counter-balance of Day-Lewis’s menacing presence, and the general gravitas of the film. Both the actor and the role seemed to made of the cheapest substance.

In America

Watched this for Paddy Considine, with a bitta Sam Norton thrown in. Wasn't disappointed on those fronts, but the material sure didn't deserve the '8 stars' it gets from IMDb and the like. Shoddy wish-fulfilment and some heavy-handed multiculturalism (where the hell did the Cuban coterie appear from at the end, for example?) sucked the realism-glow out of its finer points. I was moved by the young girl's final wish, and intrigued by the family investment of the film-makers, but couldn't overlook its clunkier mores.

Gone Baby Gone

It's the choices you don't make that really define who you are. That's the premise which Affleck's doughty film starts with, and tantalisingly ends on. The city you live in, the parents who raise you, the blows that life brings.

The Affleck brothers personify this with the choice locations and flowing Bostonian patter which fire the first third into lurid life. Casey A is a convincing focal point as a PI on the case of a missing child, but behind the camera things started to go a little amiss for me. Not that his big bro's directing isn't surprisingly assured (with low scuttling cameras pursuing action scenes and all the actors given plenty of room to breathe). One flaw I do lay at his door though is that, despite the emotional thrust of choices and motivations being convincing for the most part, the dialogue started feeling anything but at key moments. This was hurt further by the horrible (and I'm sure studio-enforced) 'narration' section which accompanied the shift into the second act. It's utterly unnecessary, given how all the conceits are deftly written large on the screen. (Later events, despite being based in numerous complex-concerns, also pan-out fairly far-fetched when all stirred together, but this challenge to credulity may be a fault of the book).

A welter of gangs, drugs, paedofilia, poverty, honour, and hard-learnt convictions fill the film, and it's a mix deserving of attention. The core emphasis on the cycling strifes played out in society's underbelly was even surreally echoed by one particular child abduction that got a lot of publicity in the UK (and helped stymie the film's distribution here). When it comes to tackling real issues, you can't say fairer than that.



Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Another film fronted by a PI that touches on paedophilia, but couldn't be more different in tone. Wilfully narrated by Downey Jr's thief-turned-dick protagonist, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang cleaves through some turgid themes using the hard-nosed approach of the pulp detective novel – spitting out staccato witticisms until your funnybone has been tenderised and even the dark Valley-shenanigans depicted have taken on a hyper-real glow. The dialogue is outrageously unrealistic but juicily pert, events concertina via the endearingly bumbling authorial tone, and along the way a lot of people get ****ed up. But some of them are still alive at the end. And if they're bad, they still get a slap. Not ground-shaking perhaps, but enjoyably man-handles some storytelling formulas and home-truths along the way.



Dean Spanley

This Yuletide-friendly fondle of reincarnation and family-rejuvination themes hangs almost entirely on its slowly-spiralling 'twist', so I'll try not to give that away. Suffice to say that O'Toole is majestic as the patriarch who delights mainly in spiking his dutiful son with motivational barbs, coloured by his own eloquent brand of curmedgeounly certainty. The son is played with suitable ingenue-transparancy by Northam, but he and the film are hurt by a slow first act and a second that could have done with some serious cutting. Say 25 minutes or so. This over-windy repetitious phase may work drolly in book form, but it kind of precludes kids from getting a kick out of the film (which they might well have done otherwise), and nearly sent my old man to sleep when i saw it with him. Luckily another big-screen 'brand' in Sam Neill steps to the fore as the eponymous Dean, luxuriating in the sonorous monolgues that accompany a trance he enters whenever offered a rare Hungarian wine. And therein lies the secret on which the whole story is pitched. And a very endearing one it is too - which is brought down-to-earth by the end in pretty touching fashion via a simple visual association, and thanks in many ways to the florid-but-charming character work by O'Toole that has gone before.

Nice reviews Gollygosh Thanks

__________________
Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

My Winnipeg



The Carriage

Guy Maddin is trying to 'film his way out' of his ice-clad hometown, charting its idiosyncrasies, its slumbering trends and exotic ‘gynocracies’, all the elements that have kept him its semi-willing prisoner, never letting him quite build the momentum to escape its peculiarly familiar folds.


The Gait

Like the train that houses our narrator, this film takes a while to pick up speed, but once running free, it chatters and chunters along like a coal-fired dream. Maddin’s personal journey through a city only slightly older than his grandmother is a tour-de-force of fabrication, history & emotional truth, all playfully mixed together with dreamlike verisimilitude.

Join him as he rushes past ‘Trash Hill’ festooned with tobogganing children. Watch dead men playing hockey, while frozen horse heads inspire a baby boom. His sensibilities are sometimes jaundiced and colourful like a bruise, but you can sense a preserved and willful knowledge in his story’s wild contusions.

Did the city's founding fathers really commission this, as the net would have it? If so they got a lot more than they bargained for. Endorsements formed from a ballet of semi-subliminal accusations, liminal pudendums, and charges of third-level masonry. It's all in there, along with various ectoplasmic recollections and electromagnetic buffalo. Positive snowprints lead us down uncharted paths, reversing expectations and personalising the unknown. The Nazi's invade his memories of sexual awakening, fuse with civic pride, then get held up as idols of disenchantment, before melting into the ‘increasingly important background’, as the next magic spell distills new wonders from the once innocuous-seeming town, of Winnipeg.

Rating =

-to-

, depending on your temperature & temperament.

Thanks Golly

My Winnipeg looks great. I'm looking for it now . thanks for the review

No worries - cheers for reading

Nice writeup. I've seen both My Winnipeg and Brand upon the brain! over the holidays, liked them both. He has a very peculiar style and I especially liked listening to the interview on Criterion's BUTB disc, helps to put you in the right frame of mind and explains quite a few things which may go over your head...

Here's an interesting short from him which had me giggling.
Guy Maddin - Sissy Boy Slap Party

__________________
http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

Gah, I'd love to hear that interview. Saw it on pay-per-view so no extras

Heh, not surprised you like Sissy Boy . Saw it on the Saddest Music extras - and perhaps is the reason it felt like a revelation (or possibly a creation) when Maddin said he had a girlfriend in Winni

Yeah, me too actually, especially after watching My Winnipeg which seemed to indicate he has some homosexual tendencies. BUTB also deals with gender confusion/homosexuality so I think he may be bisexual or pansexual...or maybe he's just gay friendly...

The Story of the Weeping Camel



The Tear Jerking

A camel rejects her newly born colt, leaving him to die in the harsh Mongolian landscape, despite the ministrations of their farmer owners.

The Real Story

This ‘story doc’ brings you into close proximity with the lives of a Mongolian family as they oversee the calving season of their camel flock. The first two acts are filled with calm and reflective camera work, snuggled silently in the family tent or joining the camels in casting a placid eye to the ever-present horizon. Only occasional observational flourishes separate it from a simple solid documentary – with dancing sand & shimmering ‘Laurence of Arabia’ arrivals interspersed amongst the long and ‘thoughtful’ takes.

Its student-film roots are mainly hidden by the rough documentary façade, but it’s interesting to note that one of the directors is Mongolian herself, and this explains how they knew about the fascinating ritual which pushes the final story-arc into a new fact-fantasy realm.

I can’t spoil it, because it’s the type of resolution you have to build up to, and enjoy in context. All I can say is that the only other major event in the film is when the two youngest boys are sent off to a larger settlement, to bring back a violinist, who they believe can help reconcile the estranged camel-mother and her son.

The strangely sporadic subtitles work well as much is self explanatory, and it suits the phlegmatic ‘outback’ lifestyle we’re observing. I can't give it the ballistic rating that it's quietly wonderful ending deserves, given that the majority of the film has an essence captured in many other solid 'hinterland' documentaries, but i would say ignore the faux-tears of the camel, and let the Mongolian wind cast its quiet spell over you.

Some recent-ish Tabs...




Rope

Wonderfully (horribly) tense opening. Unfortunately i just couldn't buy the transition Stewart's character goes through. (A fault of the play no doubt - but felt JS & Hitch could possibly have played it differently. As it stands, i'd need his argument to be sourced more [infeasible really - this isn't a philosophy debate] or his transition to be less abrupt to believe in it. Happy to bitch more about this if anyone's up for it )

Wasn't sure some of other stage-to-screen transitions all worked either - such as the side-on view of the maid clearing the table (which i assume woulda been centre-stage in the production - with the cast still seen behind). But damn it has real claustrophobic tension at points, very comparable to the intimate captivation that the theatre can induce. (And the mammoth takes were great to behold - even if there was some added niggly fun to be had in watching one transition go slightly awry, ducking hurriedly into a murderous back - but that only highlighted how breezily 'seamless' some of the changeovers were - and how ambitious a project it was in all. [I can only imagine how a steadycam might have made the opening scenes even more detached and chilling - and given the penchant for remakes these days i probably won't have to wait long to find out ]).





Happy-Go-Lucky

Very deft, pretty damn pleasing. Sally Hawkins is great as the primary-school teacher who's too good for this world, yet somehow believably of it. Wasn't completely sold on the tramp scene imbedded in the middle (think the script was asking an infuriating -and potentially fatuous- amount, so it's a credit to the acting and directing that they neaaarly turned it into a killer memorable scene [which would've hung like a weighty-counterbalance in the middle of the film, giving the story-arms either side some extra momentum & spin])

Eddie Marsan (the memorable Mr Pancks of recent TV series Little Dorrit) is also strong as the unbalanced driving instructor (if this was his story it might be called Unhappy-Stay-Unlucky )

Quite a Middlemarch-style 'floating' end - with lives carrying on, changed but the same, rather than some tumultuous revelation or world-rending crash. Which felt pretty damn suitable as well





Kinky Boots - Another britcom jostling for position in the Full Monty pouch. Pretty patchy, but boasts a full-bodied performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor. Ok, so in real life the struggling shoe factory pimped its wares in equally dowdy Dussledorf, not the Milan of the film, but everyone likes some colour and safe sexual-allusions with their feel-goodness right?


Calender Girls - I'm not really the target audience for this equally 'true story based' tale of mumsy nudity, so found it about as rebellious as headbutting a dandelion. Still stays true to the FM tune of worthy-entrepreneurialness and slow-paced raciness in a pretty endearing way.


Garden State - Hmm, had its moments, but this damaged home-coming felt like almost too-personal a journey by Zach Braff on one hand, and then a bit too blandly generic on the other. Criticism of over-medication is one worthy strand i felt was handled well, and the slightly more upbeat mini-adventure in the final third also added some popcorn appeal.





Serenity

Rewatched it, and I'm still a sucker for its frontier sci-fi and self-depreciating humour. The grey coat allusions tied up in this 'brown coat' brigade with a black deputy-commander are perhaps a bit odd. And the Frankenstein element is nothing particularly new – but then none of it really is – just multiple memes stirred up and cutely packaged by Whedon's muse.





Garage

Josie is slow more than stupid, but simple with it too at times. Heavy built but mainly light of heart, he leads a slumbering life manning the local garage, going on long walks, and lending a partially-understanding ear to those that cross his path.

Treated with gentle pity for the most part by the village community, you still sense the quiet walks and well-meaning sociability are a stop-gap form of satisfaction for him, and he would dearly love to engage in a greater way.

So keen and well-realised are the tragedies of a man who has trouble communicating with the world, and understands always a little too late, if at all, that I don't even know if I can recommend this film. But I should, because it has such a light touch in places, evokes the sometimes-harsh beauty of the Irish environs well, and has a winning way of building cumulative truths. Plus the horse is good (oh yes, there are some wry smiles with your tragedy too )





Thank You for Smoking

This film is playful. As fun a take on statistical mortality and salve-all spin-doctoring as you'll find, i'd wager. Cheeky graphics, editing, cutaways and the like festoon the occasion. Just about everyone gets lampooned (from the 'death triumverate' of tobacco, alcohol & firearms, to the minor gods of cheddar cheese, political avarice, and saccharine family values).

Eckhart's tobacco-lobbyist sees himself as a mediator between two sects, but his 'teach the controversy' battle really centres on proving the other guy wrong - to all the hearts and minds that are watching. He tangles with the fact-finders of journalism, learns from the perception-gurus of hollywood, and passes all this on to his kid. Leaving us slightly confused as to who the movie's culprit is.

The music harks back to a ‘golden age’ of more robust certitudes, and while the story doesn't quite give us our own song to sing, it's a chirpy take on some ongoing sins

...And some more...




The Dark Knight

Can't say I was totally blown away. Did like the grittiness that rasped its way through the plot, although felt it had rubbed itself down to more of a raspy annoyance by the very end (The Eckhart arc didn't work for me ultimately – leaving the story flapping in the breeze somewhat after a point).

Nolan still doesn't quite seem to have a handle on the action scenes – although the epic end to the second act was one big barrel-roll of fun The camera-circling technique surrounding some of the Joker's rambles also fell flat for me (and the rising musical tone used to enforce tension felt like an act of desperation in some ways – as if the original material hadn't quite done the trick – or they'd been beguiled by the idea that this sparse sound complemented the single-minded insanity of the character, but then couldn't let it go, even tho it was about as effective as a 5th-grader's violin solo).

Thought Ledger did well with the Joker – he'd obviously drawn on Nicholson a lot, but modulated it into a version which meshed well with the 'post-structuralist' chaotic vibe of this incarnation. Gyllenhaal also seemed a much better fit for the Rachel-shoes, and this new Nolan-tone, than Katie Holmes did.

If it weren't for all the hype I would have put the brakes on some of that bitching. But given that the fanboy flames of passion were burning so bright, I thought I'd unleash my snarky critic and have a snipe at some weaker bits & pieces





The Oxford Murders

Treacle-slow murder-mystery that stuffs its bready sandwich of convoluted twists and ivy-clad settings with some truly fatuous academic talk. If you're unfamiliar with the big-name maths & quantum-lite topics they pontificate about then these exchanges may seem unhelpfully impenetrable, but if you've done some 'science-philosophy 101' grubbing it'll all seem ludicrously elementary in the mouths of John Hurt's eccentric professor & Elijah Wood's protege. Amusingly an educational comic-book later helps them solve part of the symbolic code that emerges as the main clue in a series of murders.

There are some good points amongst the dross and the disappointment. Alex Cox appears as a professor driven to distraction by his pursuit for mathematical truth (in a sordid & very Pi-like sub-section) amongst other fun cameos. The film regularly looks good, and its final reveal, when it fiiiinally arrives, is actually not bad. But overall it's uneven, too slow for it's own good, and generally unconvincing.





Enemy at the Gates

Not as good as i wanted it to be. War-torn Stalingrad is filmed in grand decrepitude to great effect, but the tale of competing assassins (Law's bumpkin Commie crackshot vs Harris's Nazi hard-hitter brought in to cut off his opponent's propaganda successes) dissipates its inherent tension too frequently. The final bouts in particular don't feel that strategic (which would be fine, only they're pitched as such). A more frequent suspect tho is the spooled-out love-triangle, which is made worse by a tiresomely cycling score.

Bucolic-faced extras aside, this is often a comely looking flick. The dominoes of Commie philosophy fall with flaccid ease, but ideological conflict was never the core appeal. It shoulda been a titanic clash unfairly pawned into privately-driven hands. It tried it's best, but missed the mark on that score.





Ghost Town

Had some fun conceits (especially the final principle on which all the ghostly matters were resolved - which although still kinda mawkish, felt more poignant and rewarding than much of the monolithic mawkishness that had started to dominate the plot). Gervais's winningly-misanthropic sensibilities meant he fit the lead character pretty well.





Vicky Christina Barcelona

Not sure whether it was the Spanish light, or the lack of Allen agonising all over the screen, but this seemed to display more directorial flourishes and panache than his recent Scoop (which i couldn't finish). Johansson was tepid and transparent in this too (pretty she definitely is, but her acting skills seem to mainly involve opening her eyes and pointing her head, as far as i can see), and the build-up wasn't entirely promising. Cruz seems to be getting a lot of the acclaim for what's good about this flick, and events definitely hit a high-flying peak when her neurotic character finally appears, but it's solid groundwork by Bardem in particular (and the juicy juxtapositions of the 'love pentagon' that evolves) that are equally behind the successes of that thoroughly enjoyable stage.





Burn After Reading

Bit of a pout pourri number, but with that familiar Cohen Bro 'carrion flower' scent throughout. Best way to summarise it is through some talking head snippets from the DVD extras (i paraphrase) - 'Central Intelligence Agency meets personal fitness'; 'It's all about people in their 30s'; 'Stupid people, and sex'.

Not entirely satisfactory blend in some ways. Perhaps the espionage aspect leaves you wanting more ends to be tied up. ('What have we learnt', a high-up spook asks at the end, and i had to ask the same). And using 'stoopidity' as a plot driver can be a touch annoying at times. But it's got a charismatic cast, some classy points of tension and release, and is a fine one to slump in front of at the end of the day.





Changeling

A willowy Jolie & a diffident Eastwood behind the camera means this 'true story' gets two big Hollywood barrels of emotional & factual presence, where it might have been just a period made-for-tv travesty. Got to respect the genuine research that went into this and the quantity of known facts that actually made it to the screen. It's still played around with for effect of course, and glossed up somewhat for a story of abuse, insanity & social inequality. Well worth the somewhat-glamourised trip into a gritty bit of history tho.

(But for those of you who think troublesome citizens no longer get sent to the madhouse, check out modern Mother Russia for a start )





Proof

Further proof that stories about eccentric maths geniuses don't always add up to Oscar material. The main problem here, aside from Paltrow's central character being a bit of an annoying foot-stomping child (& Gyllenhaal's consistent interest in her appearing a bit of a long-shot as a result) is that it seems to have been directed by John Madden the gridiron star. Key lines were delivered as the camera cut to the back of their head; seemingly well-delivered performances were somehow mangled in the mix; conversations were either laid out repetitively or with no believable flow. It struck me that they just hadn't shot enough takes at the time, and were left with a mess when they arrived at the editing room. Either way, found the decent central theme of a daughter sacrificing herself for her disturbed father totally undermined by these cumulative flaws.





The Lives of Others

More interrogations and injustices for me. Set initially during the Chernenko period of Soviet rule, when extra repressive methods were again 'spreading like an ill wind', we see the Stasi spies of East Germany plundering their populace for dissident information with galvanised zeal. The film focuses on the shadowy affection a hardline spy develops for an artistic couple who seem to be Good Communists, but are brought into the web of surveillance nevertheless.

It's beautifully shot, and acted with powerful understatement throughout. I wasn't completely sold on a couple of the artier influences our thespian couple had on our moribund spy, but everything else lived up to the director's aspirations for me - namely recreating the paranoia and lurking brutality of those times with fidelity, while championing the role art has in vocally taking on repressive taboos.

It was interesting to hear in the commentary that the lead actor himself had been watched by four Stasi spies in his theatre company during his heyday as a stage actor - and to this day has only discovered the names of two of them - meaning some of his friends of that period could well have been informing against him. His accusation that his wife was also a paid up Stasi throughout their marriage has been challenged in court it seems. That gives you an idea of some of the ongoing effects of that scurrilous phase.

(The science of interrogation via sleep & sensory deprivation, with its power to break people regardless of guilt, of course still resonates with some of the more scurrilous practices of our own days)