peteg's blog 2010-01-28-DasBoot.autumn

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Take so many beautiful women on holiday and you've got to pay for it somehow. Woody Allen consciously projects his neuroses onto all of them, with Rebecca Hall coming off the worst; at least Cruz can hide behind her Spanish, and Scarlett Johansson some kind of libertine persona. Clarkson is all neurosis and no character. It really is tough at the top of the American pile, what with all that money to burn and golf to play. I'm beginning to understand why Pomeranz finds him misogynistic; in its favour, this is too vapid to cause much offense. I think he was/is trying for a triple here with Match Point and something else I haven't seen.

The Searchers

Another John Ford / John Wayne collaboration. The little sense it makes is totally normative: at the end all's-well as the white girl-child is recovered from the Comanche camp and returned to some random family's shack, undergoing a change in attitude from steadfast anti-Waynery to please-take-me-home-good-sir off-screen. Wayne is hard here, unforgiving, but his Confederate backstory is left opaque and his conversion on the road to wherever answers the needs of plot but not character. There may well be a litany of awesome shots here, so look and don't think. I am not getting that truly-great movie feeling from these non-spaghetti Westerns; they might have Wayne but they don't have Ennio Morricone and Leone, or even (gasp) Eastwood.

Sneakers

Yet another 1980s-esque computer movie. What a slide for Robert Redford, from All the President's Men and The Sting to this. River Phoenix is totally banal here, making me wonder what his big role was. Ben Kingsley is Julian Assange circa 1992, albeit with ties to organised crime instead of disaffected employees of Uncle Sam. David Straitharn does a good job as a blind hacker, but I don't know what James Earl Jones was thinking. This movie wears its political allegience on its sleave; the NSA et al are necessary evils to secure the U.S., but not things to pal up to, which is more than it says about the Republicans.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

A 1962 B-movie starring John Wayne and James Stewart, or maybe it's an A-movie made by John Ford; it is rated #249 in IMDB's top-250 after all. I found the bit characters to be much better than the leads, e.g. the newspaper editor must have been a fine stage actor, and the Swedish family deserved more attention than they got. Wayne and Stewart are supposed to epitomise brawn and brains respectively, but all I heard was Gil Scott Heron's B Movie, twenty years too soon.

TRON: Legacy

I promised Sandy and Albert a long time ago that we'd go see this. As it turned out, Sandy was in Melbourne with her parents, so I ended up going with Albert, Rob and his mate Nick to a cheapie 3D session at The Ritz.

This is not a movie to reflect on deeply; if it wasn't trading on the TRON brand I doubt it would have pulled a crowd at all. I wonder if it will make back the it cost for all that digital wizzbangery.

The brand really is all they're trading on; there is little of the TRON aesthetic here beyond the luminescent lines on the clothing, and Jeff Bridges, I guess. So many of the plot devices don't amount to anything: the army, the game grid, the "perfection" that Clu is charged with finding and enforcing. While I grant that genocide is more emotive than tax evasion ala Star Wars, the isos aren't given an opportunity to show what makes them special; they are as risible as reducing the Force to something in the bloodstream. Towards the end I hoped they'd switch to vaudeville, with Sam downloading the iso DNA into his iThing and flogging it to the Japanese sex robot industry, neatly dovetailing with Bridges' neo-zen and his primary competition from the 1980s.

I liked the original aesthetic; some deride it as the best that could be done in 1983, but like Art Deco and the rest of modernity I think it strikes a good bargain with the limitations of the day. That world was flood-filled, sharp-edged, digital, a partially-successful metaphor for what goes on in those then-new machines. This movie disposes of all that in trying to be realer than real, as Rob said: it is continuous, with light cycles bouncing around like Arnie in Terminator 2, rather than switching at grid points, and the planes stall like in Iron Man. Vale inventive, speculative metaphysics, hello lazy script writing.

The worst part of the whole thing is how derivative it is: we have the useless Orc army from The Lord of the Rings (how could our heroes stand against those? — don't you worry about that), and that climactic "Thou shall not pass" Gandalf guff, the Discovery-as-freight-train from 2001, "I am not your father" from one of the Star Wars, Tony Blair as Michael Sheen, camping it up as the albino who got rejected from the Matrix. Everyone's into their martial arts, which is completely unexplained as Sam does little to show he can do any of this in meatspace; Larry Fishburne is just a cop now. They missed the Genesis part of the story, and in doing so reduced this to no more than a demonstration of 3D technology in 2010, doubtlessly already surpassed. If I'd seen Inception then I could probably complain about what a crap ride through inner space this is.

Dana Stevens was even less impressed.

The Prestige

Wow, I saw this at The Ritz more than four years ago. I remain unconvinced. David Bowie is excellent as Tesla, and one has to wonder if he's got any more music in him. Incidentally Rebecca Hall puts in a showing as half-of-Christian Bale's love interest.

Wargames

Yeah, early 1980s, acoustic couplers, dot-matrix, rasterized obsolescence. Broderick loves this stuff, and it might just be the best thing Ally Sheedy ever did. The plot doesn't fly, it can't, but no-one cares because it's the 1980s.

The Last Emperor

Well, what are you going to do if the Chinese Government allows you to make a movie in the Forbidden City? Spend 3hr 40min on a biopic of the last emperor, that's what. I saw this in two sittings, and it could definitely have used a bit more cutting. There are huge numbers of extras here, and one can only wonder what the costume budget was. The bloke himself gets a sympathetic treatment, even though he seems completely egocentric (by upbringing, etc., sure); one cannot even claim he has his subjects' best interests at heart as he has no experience of their lives at all, at least until he is no longer emperor.

O'Toole will always be T.E. Lawrence to me.

American Psycho

I didn't get this, except perhaps as an extended metaphor for the GFC. A wasted effort from Christian Bale who is certainly the Robert de Niro of his day. I'm prepared to grant that it might make sense if you've already read the book, which I haven't and won't.

Barry Lyndon

Kubrick's costume drama. Beautifully shot but entirely banal; one needs to read the tea leaves to get anything out of this. Maybe he's trying to say that the Irish had a go at debasing the English aristocracy and failed? Unbelievably #219 in IMDB's top-250. I saw this sometime before 2003.

Henry Fool

Hal Hartley's masterpiece, I still think. Apparently I haven't seen this since 2004, a little less than six years ago. Maybe I caught it in the cinema back in 1998 or so, I can't recall.

I still have to revisit his also-masterful Surviving Desire and The Book of Life.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I saw this about five years ago. Kaufman milks this one premise for all it is worth, and whoever shot and edited this movie are geniuses. Certainly worthy of being parked at #61 in the IMDB top-250. Note to self: it was Carrey and not Sandler who made a movie worth watching.

Howl

A reconstruction of the events surrounding the publication of Ginsberg's Howl. Of the three strands the most interesting was certainly James Franco as Ginsberg, recounting his coming out of the closet. David Strathairn channels a little of his Ed Murrow demeanour from Good Night, and Good Luck while playing the vaguely incompetent prosecutor in the court room obscenity trial of Howl's publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I've been to City Lights and I can tell you their floor staff are pig-ignorant of all of this, of what transpired in their poetry room. The third strand is an overly literal cartoon rendering of the poem itself, giving us something to look at as Franco declaims.

Dana Stevens got me onto this. Fred Kaplan strays away from his nukes for long enough to praise the poet.

I much prefer Ginsberg's America, especially with the unofficial Tom Waits accompaniment.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

A George Clooney / Coen brothers segue from a few recently-seen films. I remember the hoopla in 2000 but the idea of seeing another three (stereotypically dumb) kings did not appeal; having seen it I guess one could call this their Nashville. In brief it is shysterism in the south, features some great set pieces (the Klan), though I think Clooney's hair fixation may have been as funny as it got.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

A George Clooney segue from The American. I liked the use of vintage colour filming. Rockwell is solid but doesn't do it for me. Trashy all round. Good to see Urbaniak in a bit part.

Clooney overcooks this one, which feels like it has the trainer wheels on, a dry run for the far superior Good Night, and Good Luck, which also ruminates on the golden years of the idiot box.

Army of Darkness

The Bruce Campbell classic. I remember seeing this back in 1996. It is somewhat timeless.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Yeah, a Seymour Hoffman turkey that wanted to be Memento. It falls far short. Roughly a Tomei segue from The Wrestler with the expectation of good things from the rest of the cast. It is drearily predictable, somewhat along the lines of The Man Who Wasn't There.

Angel Heart

One trope invariant in American cinema is that people go to New Orleans and weird stuff happens. (I can readily cite Tightrope from earlier in the same decade, and George W. Bush from this one.) This was a Mickey Rourke segue, one of his classic 80s efforts, guest-starring a Robert de Niro in full Robert de Niro mode. Even the devil could not do a better Robert de Niro than Robert de Niro.

So yeah, some voodoo, some weirdness... I don't know what to make of it. We're supposed to be concerned or interested about some kind of missing guy, but as the bodies pile up we wish there'd been a bit more characterisation of the bit parts.

The American

At The Ritz with Rob, the 9:10pm session, with maybe ten other people. Someone must have told Corbijn to stop making moving photographs ala Control as the opening scene has some pointlessly shaky handheld camerawork. Fortunately Dogme 2010 this is not.

Overall it was OK but not as good as his previous effort, largely because the source material was not as strong, or perhaps Corbijn is more passionate about rock stars than quiet men. I would have liked to have seen more of the urban life in the Italian villages, and for all of the characters to be more fully developed. Clara is the prostitute with a heart of gold who decides she wants to exchange it for US dollars... seemingly unaware of what a losing proposiiton that is now. Clooney's early finger work assembling the rifle leads us to think he is more klutz than craftsman, despite the protestations to his mechanical dexterity (yes, yes, with Clara too).

It ambles OK but just doesn't add up to anything much.

Review by Dana Stevens.

The Man Who Wasn't There

Black and white neo-noir. Coen brothers — does their reach ever exceed their grasp more than it does here? Very melancholic and the point was unclear to me. Not a Billy Bob fan.

Cube

I saw this with Mark at the long-defunct Dendy cinema on George St, the one that used to live inside the Metro, back in 1997 or so. I have seen the sequels since and they are shit (so don't spoil this one by going any further). The underlying design concept, viz a grid of identical sets, would make for a good stage production if there was money enough for serious electromechanical technology.

mrak complained that I write more about movies I hate than those I like. I disagree, I tend to write about the bits that disappoint, having a lifelong hypothesis that the good bits speak for themselves (and speak better than wordy recreations). To step out of character, I'd say this flick is just about perfect for what it is, i.e. shoestring scifi/horror, and the stereotyping of the characters is totally inline with that. Noone's acting skills are taxed here and that's just fine too.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed

I was keen to see this small British indie flick after it was deemed worthy by Margaret and David. It reminded me a bit of Alexandra's Project (ugly to watch) with a Cube-ish ending (the savant wandering into the light). It is too predictable. Gemma Arterton is gutsy in her role which is not at all the same as good.

Boy

Not as good as I hoped. Perhaps they tried too hard to avoid the Jake the Muss quagmire. The opening five minutes are the best in the whole movie.

The Wrestler

Happy to see it again.

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Terrible. I can see why there hasn't been another Tom Wolfe movie made since: DePalma tries to milk it but there just isn't much to milk. Griffith is annoying, and the speech by Freeman at the end is totally lame. Hanks is not yet the "great actor" he becomes in the mid-90s.

I read the book ages ago, and while it is far superior it is still not that great; it is difficult to see it as more than mere class envy from Wolfe. Taking the WASP Masters of the Universe down like this is feeble, not ironic.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Yeah, it's about as empty and fun as I remember. At particular points the plot makes no sense, and we never do find out what Victor's deal with Stryker is.

Eyes Wide Shut

I remember being keen to see this back in 1999 or so, the first (and only) Kubrick to be released in my adult lifetime. Watching it more than ten years later I still think there is a lot less going on here than some make out; the erstwhile Cruises are rubbish, and the titillation has no follow-through, no menace, little tension, and a conclusion perilously close to "it was a dream". Some of the cinematography is good, and he did nail the ritual scenes in the middle.

Wall Street

Better that the sequel, and I am now firmly convinced that Stone should have looked at the GFC from the bottom (personified here by Martin Sheen) and not the top.

The Town

I splurged my Palace Cinemas membership freebie at the 9:05pm screening at the dear old Verona. I've grown to like the refurbishment, especially now that the Academy Twin is history. The attraction was Ben Affleck's direction, having recently seen Gone Baby Gone.

Well, yeah. I'm less convinced about Affleck as an actor than as a director; perhaps he should have cast his brother again. This is essentially a heist movie, trying to evoke a sense of community, milking the product-of-where-you-came-from meme. It is solid but not as good as Gone Baby Gone; the extra fireworks rob it of much moral complexity, and it is tad too predictably macho. Casting Postlethwaite invites a losing comparison against The Usual Suspects.

Again the female characters are underwritten; one could imagine Claire (Rebecca Hall) being a bit ballsier rather than caving (to Doug, to the FBI, etc.), and what happened to Irish omerta with Krista?

The contrasting Fairfax reviews by Byrnes and Schembri must say something about how Sydneysiders and Melbournites view themselves. Dana Stevens is a bit more scathing.

The Boxer

Jim Sheridan always does a solid job with what he's got, and I guess he felt he had to make a movie about the Troubles, but the script for this one is a plodder. Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson play lovebirds separated by fourteen years of incarceration due to his juvenile entanglement with the IRA. Blair is on the radio advocating what became the Good Friday accords, and the IRA personage is nervous that he cannot satisfy his partisans. That was something worth exploring more deeply.

Unfortunately the whole thing does not deliver on the promise of its writers, director, stars or topic. Brian Cox (here Mr IRA) is Edward Norton's father in 25th Hour, and the climax is a creakily familiar taking out of the trash.

Punch Drunk Love

Adam Sandler, Emily Watson... Magnolia this is not.

Killer's Kiss

One of Kubrick's first. The acting is a bit clunky. He learnt a lot about Hitchcock in making this. Not bad but not in the same league as its immediate successors.

The Beguiled

Yankee Clint Eastwood versus a tribe of Southern women during the Civil War. An early 70s effort. Yeah.

The Expendables

It could have been worse.

Malcolm X

Another Spike Lee effort, from 1992. At three hours it was a bit too long for comfort. Well made, shot, etc. but perhaps spoilt by its earnestness; the irreverence of the later 25th Hour is missing here.

25th Hour

As good as I remembered. The music echoes Once Upon a Time in America, as does the story to some extent.

Shutter Island

I didn't really get into this. The suspenseful stuff dragged, and the twists left me cold. The ultimate one (if I got it right) is too subtle after the earlier blunderbuss revelations. Scorcese makes everything look great, as usual, but I am yet to see more than a still-blank canvas in DiCaprio. How much longer can he remain boyish, in a faux and hackneyed tough-guy pose? Dennis Lehane wrote the book on which this was based.

Nothing much here for me.

Gone Baby Gone

A lot better than I expected, and I can see why Casey Affleck went on to star in The Killer Inside Me. It is something like Se7en, piling things up, twisting, skirting a little too close to impossibility, stretching its poetic licence to fit a fable. The themes are assembled masterfully: cops, kidnapping, drugs and absent mothers, filmed resolutely without condescension, without an American ending. Boston never looked so good; they must have shot it at the height of summer.

This was a Michelle Monaghan-segue from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and she is solid here, though hers is the weakest of the central characters. Ed Harris reins in his signature largeness in disarming fashion. Morgan Freeman is relatively inoffensive.

Certainly the best movie I've seen for the first time in a long time. The author of the original book, Dennis Lehane, has a sequel of sorts due out in a fortnight. Now I'm keen to see Ben Affleck's new movie The Town.

Towelhead

A Lolita for the 21st century? Certainly a dash of Aronofsky, and perhaps Moodysson. Being American-made it has an uptick at the end, a crack that lets the light out. Eckhardt chooses the toughest roles to play, and he does fine with the slobbering. Great to see Toni Collette here, and Peter Macdissi nails his role as the Lebanese migrant father working at NASA.

Animal Kingdom

Meh, yet another Australian gangland saga. I'm glad I didn't see this in the cinema. Edgerton doesn't make it past the first half-hour, and all the characters are so underwritten that I couldn't care about any of them. Guy Pearce is solid but given very little to work with. Nothing new here.

The Girl from Monday

The Girl Who Fell to Earth... irritating camera work ruins an otherwise fun ride, though it is clear Hartley is sliding into a late-career rut here. Bill Sage tries hard to anchor a mildly incoherent plot and succeeds as much as anyone could.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

At the 6:40pm session at The Ritz with Albert and Sandy. I had to go see this, being the new Oliver Stone movie and all that, but it simply isn't that great; the plot is bent to fit, and the ending makes no sense. What, you can buy money with happiness? LaBeouf has none of the sly levity of Michael Douglas, and the movie is flat when he all too regularly does his earnest thing. It was good to see Frank Langella (as always), though his tiredness is pretty depressing. The usually solid Josh Brolin is in full-on bland mode, as if he is training for Pierce Brosnan's old roles. I appreciate that Stone felt he had to comment on the travesty of the GFC but perhaps it might have been better to look at it from the other end of town.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

I last saw this one at the cinema in 2005. Still funny. The best thing I've seen Val Kilmer in for sure.

No Such Thing

Twenty-first century Hal Hartley, this is his A Clockwork Orange. Apparently I haven't seen this since 2004, and it is better than I remember. The first thirty minutes moves quickly, maybe too quickly, and it flags around the hour mark when Polley gets to Iceland. Robert John Burke is somehow familiar underneath all that makeup, as are the rest of Hartley's regulars, most of whom put in small cameos. Mirren is great as the old media hound, a role she reprises in State of Play.

Mystery Train

I saw this late-1980s Jarmusch effort a long time ago, and remembered it as being better than it is; Dead Man is a long way from here. The Japanese couple in Memphis is probably its best aspect, though he does make some of the other stuff funny. This subtle, indulgent kind of movie making is really out of fashion now.

Flirt

Hal Hartley wrote a short and made it three times, trying to refract a stock love triangle through the milieus of New York, Berlin and Tokyo. Most effective was the first one, with Bill Sage and Martin Donovan playing off each other, and Parker Posey dipping her toe into Hartley land. In Tokyo he cast himself opposite his (future?) wife Miho Nikaido, who later put in a sterling effort in Henry Fool.

This is his worst "feature" by a long way.

Howl's Moving Castle

On Albert and Sandy's recommendation. Rated #248 on IMDB's top-250. I didn't follow it too well, and lost track of who the evil people were, and how the spells got undone, and all that sort of stuff. I guess the visuals are supposed to make up for all of that.

Life During Wartime

Solondz returns with an anticlassic. New actors fill the roles of his decade-ago Happiness, which hooked me with zigs and zangs that are totally absent here. There is no tension as everything is telegraphed. Shirley Henderson from Trainspotting is feeble in Jane Adams's role. The topics are icky and there is no payoff. The original cast was wise to stay away.

I can't help but feel that Anthony Lane saw another movie.

The Incredibles

On Albert and Sandy's recommendation. By far the best (modern) animated flick I've seen. IMDB rates it 8.1 and #185 in the top-250. I think the comedy works as well as it does because Mr Incredible and cohort don't muck around with subtlety or false modesty. I liked the nods to video games with the two-dimensional guards, amongst other things.

The Gods Must be Crazy

On Loan's recommendation. An African classic, I guess. Apparently this movie single-handedly revived the myth that rhinoceros stamp out fires.

Despicable Me

At The Ritz with Albert and Sandy at the 7:30pm 3D session. This was my first time to don the specs, and indeed it was worth the price of admission. The movie itself was a bit more ho-hum than I expected, perhaps because the jokes were a bit stale and the plot too childish.

Amateur

A mid-90s Hal Hartley effort. I bracket this and Flirt as his mid-career misfirings. Martin Donovan is only OK as he does not have the room to express himself as well as he does elsewhere. I fear Elina Löwensohn really isn't that great an actress, though she does look fabulous in some shots. Thematically it is difficult to get excited about, with a string of cliched juxtapositions and a humour that seems forced. Hartley's artificiality is missing here.

The Unbelievable Truth

Ah, Hal Hartley's first feature. Adrienne Shelley is indeed even more luminous here than she is in Trust and he makes the most of what became his regular cast. The signature artificiality is nascent, subordinated to the needs of plot and character, apart from some classic repeated dialogue in the middle. I don't know when I last saw this but am glad to see it again now.

Trust

It's about time I got back into the Hal Hartleys. I saw this most recently four years ago. Adrienne Shelley is as arresting as ever, and opposite a nihilistic Martin Donovan she shines as brightly as she always did. I have a feeling she's even better in The Unbelievable Truth. The arc is sweet and Hartley finds a place for all his film-school set pieces and ruminations. He nails the cyclical cognitive dissonance at the abortion clinic, and all the niggles of the power plays amongst the characters.

The Killer Inside Me

Wow, I have no idea what Winterbottom is trying to do now. As noted by Paul Byrnes, this is something in the vein of No Country for Old Men (etc) but even more brutal. Suspense was a bit hard to come by after the first half as the main character really does only have one modus operandi, and isn't that clever. Pullman has almost a cameo role, somewhat to my chagrin, and the ending is too Romeo and Juliet.

Completely unnecessary.

Simple Men

I haven't seen this Hal Hartley effort in about six years. It is probably the weakest of his first four features, which isn't saying a hell of a lot really. Always great to see Martin Donovan, Bill Sage, Karen Sillas... and that artificiality peculiar to Hartley. As a series of small-scale vignettes, the overarching plot and narrative are largely immaterial, just like how it ends or where it goes.

The Fabulous Baker Boys

A passable piece of fluff from 1989. Pfeiffer's character is a bit schizoid, a trashy cynical ex-AAA-escort (Alcoholics Anonymous America?) whose voice lets her put on the ritz. Jeff Bridges and his brother Beau are the boys. Both characters are barely sketched and the plot is barely there. I have no idea how it got some Oscar nominations. The lounge piano music is sweet. IMDB's score of 6.6 is about right.

Rope

Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart host a murder... what's not to like? Sitting at #216 on IMDB's top-250, this noir was probably better as a stage play. Thematically it is a bit of a threadbare response to the ubermensch vibe of the times. The cast is solid and the camera work brilliant.

Bonnie and Clyde

Ranked #222 on the IMDB top-250. I can see the genesis of Natural Born Killers here but not much more. Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman... they're better elsewhere.

Patton

General Buck Turgidson survived the Strangelove nuclear holocaust to lead the U.S. Third Army to a loud but fairly bloodless victory over the Nazis in World War II. Francis Ford Coppola was one of the writers, and there are elements of Godfather bombast, pomp and ceremony here. At almost three hours, it is gripping in a is-anything-going-to-happen sort of way, and I guess that's enough of a reason for it to be #225 in IMDB's top-250.

I found it vaguely amusing that this aggrandising propaganda, of the omlette-making variety, was made in the late 1960s when the American people's support for the war in Vietnam was seriously flagging. Patton's logic of continuing from Berlin to Moscow is impeccable: we're going to have to fight them anyway, so let's do it while we've got the army there...

Stand By Me

Classic coming-of-age, parked at #161 in IMDB's top-250. The acting is very good, the narrative arc all-American. I can't believe it's based on a Stephen King novel.

The Ninth Gate

A millenial hellraiser from Polanski. I expected a lot more from him and his cast — Lena Olin, Johnny Depp, Frank Langella... how could it be this empty? It is robbed of any suspense by the trivial pattern amongst the texts, the deus ex girl appearing just when she needed to, and a total failure to innovate on the stereotypes of the occult. I am sure fans of this type of junk have pored it over and discovered all sorts of symbols and references, deeper meanings and bullshit, but I think the ending nailed it: hollow and two hours too long.

Yes, I feel ripped off. More so now that I find that Polanski wasn't taking it very seriously either. Sheesh, why make this tripe when you can do so much better?

Frankie and Johnny

A Pacino and Pfeiffer rom with some com in New York City. I have no idea why he signed up for this one: his character is unusually soft headed and there's no chance for any kind of glory. Pfeiffer tries hard to be a lower-class waitress but is too beautiful to credit with any of this stuff. Perhaps her gay BFF was innovative in 1991, now it just seems tired.

I found it funny in a ludicrous kind of way.

The Ghost Writer

I've read way too many reviews while waiting for the incredibly-late Australian release of Polanski's latest effort. I liked The Pianist and Chinatown, though I can't remember much about either. I spent my birthday freebie at the Verona, the 9pm session.

I guess this is an attempt at a classical political thriller, ala Chinatown or All the President's Men, but it only really succeeded in reminding me of how dire the new movie scene has been for so many years. It was good to see Rents out and about, with David Tennant hair, and it was a relief that he got the majority of the screen time. Kim Cattrall is indeed quite flat, and Brosnan is miscast; he never relaxes into the role. The plot unfolds in a revelatory way, but never really makes us care, for conspiracy theories are the currency of Dan Brown novels. Perhaps they need to be local, ala Chinatown, to be worth thinking through, or incredible but rooted in fact ala the Nixon escapades. At least the editing and cinemotography are coherent, though I couldn't call it beautiful.

Reviews: Dana Stevens, Sandra Hall, Denby at the New Yorker.

Glengarry Glen Ross

Pacino flogs real estate with Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey. It's not bad but it doesn't really go anywhere. Mamet wrote the play and the movie is therefore dialogue-heavy.

The Panic in Needle Park

An early Al Pacino, from 1971. Bleak, fairly soulless, a not-at-all Trainspotting take on a completely insular heroin scene in New York. The movie provides no reason for people to do drugs; simply they are addicts and have no moral fibre. It is a product of its time, I guess. Pacino is OK playing a low-grade shell of a hustler. His next role was Michael Corleone.

Little Miss Sunshine

Better than I expected, and deservedly at #237 on IMDB's top-250. The whole thing is held together by Olive, which allows the adults to get on with being stupid and funny. Perhaps they were the family Muriel grew up to have. Toni Collette is solid, as is Steve Carell.

Tron

I last saw this somewhere between 2003 and 2005, I think, as I remember buying the 20th anniversary edition DVD in Sweden. This is solid 8-bit movie making, with a workman-like plot that is thankfully unobtrusive. The aesthetic remains awesome, being in some ways the internal flipside of Bladerunner's, and there is just the hint of the Dude in Jeff Bridges' performance.

I can't wait to see how they butcher the sequel.

The Year of Living Dangerously

A young Mel Gibson goes to Indonesia in 1965 and gets the girl (Sigourney Weaver in this instance). He is so wooden, perhaps yet to slip out of Mad Max mode, and she so girlishly giggly that the romance is totally implausible. The focus is certainly on the Westerners, mostly boorish colonialists, the Indonesians being there just for colour.

With no knowledge of the history, I learnt little here and had some difficulty following what looked to be the big plot points. Peter Weir may be taking an anti-colonial stand (in 1982?), but it has been done better elsewhere. Linda Hunt got an Oscar for her portrayal of the mysterious photographer Billy Kwan.

Two Hands

I saw this at the Verona when it was released in 1999, and apart from Rose Byrne, remember not much else about it. Ledger cuts a swathe through the high-profile Australian actors of the day: Bryan Brown is third-rate playing a gangster and this isn't even his best or final effort at it. Tom Long is typically flat, and David Field so transparently posturing. It tries to keep too many balls in the air, and pulls up empty. Perhaps its legacy is as a launchpad for Ledger, and a platform for Powderfinger's biggest hit.

In Bruges

#191 in the IMDB top-250. I didn't get into it at all; too much is telegraphed, the characters are lame, and I'm not a fan of any of the actors. The much vaunted subtlety and totally artificial morality left me cold.

Insomnia

Pacino, Hilary Swank, Martin Donovan... directed by Christopher Nolan, set in Alaska. Somehow this is less than the sum of its parts, even though everyone is trying hard. I think I prefer Pacino when he's pretending to be from New York; he seems out of place here as a west coast cop.

Sea of Love

Pacino is the pseudo-romantic lead in this cop-thriller, which is wedged somewhere between 9 1/2 weeks and Basic Instinct, right down to the Joe Cocker rendition of the eponymous song; nothing growls 1980s in quite the same way. John Goodman has the best part.

It isn't bad — the suspense is handled well — but it isn't that great either.

Toy Story 2

Better than the first one. At #228 in the IMDB top-250.

Kick Ass

Knowing, slickly produced, director Michael Vaughn has clearly been studying Fight Club closely since his much less interesting Layer Cake (circa 2005). The climax would not be out of place in any of Arnie's classics, but the unflinching brutality is. Nick Cage is minor in his supporting role, and quite OK at it, but the real stars are so obviously the kids, whose patois would be familiar (but surprising) to any geek of the 1990s. Somehow this reminded me of Brick, a revival of an old genre via youth.

This is certainly the action movie of the year, worthy of its 8.2 rating on IMDB and position at #167 on the top-250. There will be sequels... if you can't innovate, renovate, I guess.

Toy Story

Wow, I am slow to see this one, 15 years after it made such a splash for Pixar. It is parked at #149 in IMDB's top-250, understandably enough. I liked the two-track humour, but was hoping for more of the adult track to be integrated with the story, as I remember it being in Shrek. The whole thing felt a bit twee, to be honest.

...And Justice for All

I saw this 1979 Pacino vehicle a long time ago, probably on video tape. It's a fun but not particularly subtle or plausible drama set around the courts of Baltimore, or perhaps a subtle comedy saddled with excessive melodrama and obliviousness. Pacino here is just slightly smaller than the movie, and this might be one of his last efforts where he tries to do more than just channel his inner-Al, enjoyable though that often is.

City Hall

A seriously mediocre political thriller. Pacino phones it in, and Cusak is yet to hit his High Fidelity straps. The requisite romance subplot is a fizzer.

In the heat of the night

A Sydney Poitier classic, rated at 8.1 on IMDB and unbelievably not in the top-250. Rod Steiger got an Oscar for being the police chief here, after playing Mr Joyboy so well in The Loved One a few years earlier. I somehow managed to pick the person who did it, which is unusual for me; perhaps the murder plot is pedestrian. I also found the racism a bit one-dimensional, and the peripheral characters a bit flat.

Dick Tracy

As cartoonish as Batman, but otherwise forgettable. I didn't get any of the humour in this at all. The acting is so-so, and Warren Beatty quite wooden. There are good reasons that it is largely forgotten. I don't understand why Pacino got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but in any case he didn't win.

Brides of Christ

Like The Thorn Birds, they don't make them like this anymore. In this case it is easy to see why: the last big piece of drama that I can remember the ABC funding (and producing?) was Changi, superficially structurally similar to this. We can thank the funding cuts and crap management of the Howard era for the current situation of outsourced mediocrity.

The first episode is nigh-on perfect, and though the later episodes flag a little the standard is kept high. All of the actresses are brilliant, with perhaps Josephine Byrnes and Brenda Fricker being the standouts. The young Naomi Watts is just a little too histrionic and bloody-minded for my tastes; some of her mannerisms are familiar from her later work, but she learnt subtlety after this one. Harold Hopkins puts in an appearance as a worn-out husband, and Russell Crowe as a gung-ho mechanic.

Has there been anything in Australia in the past twenty years that would be worthy of this sort of treatment?

The French Connection

Hackman got an Oscar for his efforts in this one. I don't know, it's all a bit too Dirty Harry for me. At least it doesn't patronise its audience even at its most artificial. The cinematography is pure 1971.

Unforgiven

Clint Eastwood's first Oscar success, from 1992, deservedly. Suspenseful, character-driven, a new play on old clichés. That the Man With No Name is reborn was always on the cards; it was going to be about the how. Hackman hams it up a little.

Batman

Nicholson has a lot of fun here. Burton keeps everything moving, and the cinematography is perfect. The plot is comic-book pure.

Scarecrow

I saw this one ages ago. It features a Godfather-era Pacino in a comedic role, and a pre-Lex Luthor Gene Hackman doing his best to be sensitively tough. Driven by dialogue, which is sometimes sketchy. There is a washed-out early 70s realism to the cinematography. Not bad, but it does drag at times. A counterpoint to Cool Hand Luke, perhaps.

In the Year of the Pig

This is the pick of the anti-Vietnam War docos I've seen so far. I struggle to believe it was made in 1968, while LBJ was in power and Hồ Chí Minh still alive, as the level of cultural awareness canvassed here far outstrips that of the U.S. Government as represented by McNamara, Rusk et al.

Like Hearts and Minds, many injudicious comments are made, but these are counterbalanced by erudite commentary from some people who do know South East Asia, including at least one US Senator. Perhaps most interesting is the Frenchman Paul Mus, who demonstrates a keen understanding of Vietnamese culture and aspirations. He died soon after the movie was released. Also David Halberstam puts in a suitably literate and awestruck appearance.

The iconic footage of Madam Nhu, Uncle Ho, LBJ, Bảo Đại, Ngô Đình Diệm, Curtis LeMay, ... is priceless, as are the images of the Vietnamese people during wartime, especially around Hà Nội. There is much less war porn here than in the typical doco.

Topical: The Journal of Vietnamese Studies had a forum on Paul Mus in 2009.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

At the Chauvel with Rob at their show-and-tell with one of the writer/directors Judith Ehrlich. I think she was out here for the Sydney Film Festival. It opens more broadly this coming Thursday.

I'd been meaning to see this film since I first heard about it more than a year ago. It is well-constructed and occasionally riveting, with some great selective quoting of Nixon. They could have dropped some of the worn-out war porn though. There is a degree of self-absorption here that is also vaguely troubling, but it is difficult to communicate the nuance of political influence without sliding to extremes.

Much was made during the discussion of the recent hoopla around Wikileaks and its founder Lassange, and also the similarly-recent legislation in Iceland to protect whistle blowers. There seems to be little to learn from this film about connecting to the general population in ways that might change policies; Ellsberg's big impact was to get the Watergate investigation started, which was also a fortunate accident for him as it allowed the court to dismiss the charges arising from his leaking the Pentagon Papers. As always with technicians, he failed to understand how little the people care about details and proof.

Ellsberg is very similar here to what he was in Hearts and Minds, which is perhaps unsurprising as his life has been in some kind of stasis since 1971. (Ehrlich stated this quite flatly.)

I wonder if Ellsberg's book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers is worth reading.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

I remember Bob Carr calling this one a turkey when it won an Oscar (or something) back in 2000. I have to agree, the cliches are tedious and there is no depth. All the flying looks totally fake, the fighting is ho-hum, except perhaps between the two women. Oh sure, it's a form of dance, in which case I'm watching the wrong movie. Capriciousness robs everyone and everything of possibility.

The Karate Kid

On the strength of Dana Stevens's review of the remake; I can barely imagine that Jackie Chan is as funny there as Mr Miyagi was here. Having an Okinawan protagonist was apposite then, and I wonder if the Beijing setting, the fresher prince, the kung fu, etc. will satisfy. This was perhaps the Gran Torino of its day.

It has the cheese, and all that other wonderful 1980s stuff. The ending is a bit abrupt, and the whole thing is totally implausible, both of which add to its charm. I liked the lead boy, he reeked of east coast meets west, but his opponents were banal. Shue is vapid and game.

Another Slate article on the cultural import of this film.

Hearts and Minds

An anti-Vietnam War doco from 1974. There is some iconic footage here, and some stupendous comments from people who should have known better. I am keen to see more of the Saigon from that era.

The summary at Wikipedia is quite good.

The Thorn Birds

Loan's mate chị Mai is a big fan of the book (in translation) and this mini-series, so I figured it'd be worth a look. There are some great performances from actors in minor roles, especially Christopher Plummer as an Italian Catholic operator. The leads are a bit more wooden, partially excused by some dodgy dialogue and hackneyed set pieces. The characters are a bit too shallowly drawn for me to get excited about, but are sufficient vehicles for the main themes, I guess.

Whatever its faults, they don't make them like this any more; no longer is anyone really interested in romancing undeveloped Australia...

City Lights

Classic Chaplin. It didn't exactly scream "masterpiece!" at me, but it had its moments.

All about Eve

Something of a chick-flick with brains (but only something). Bette Davis is great, as is Anne Baxter. Addison DeWitt is such a cliche that I can't believe the actor got an Oscar for playing him. This is the sort of intrigue Sydney theatre types dream of.

This is parked at #88 on IMDB's top-250.

The Book of Eli

Ah, the power of the trailer... Oldman, Waits, Washington, how could it be this bad? I felt ashamed that I took Loan to see this pile of crap at the Cinebox Hòa Bình on 3/2 street. Should have seen a chick flick instead.

The English Patient

A movie that tries to appeal to everyone: a bit of war, romance, deserts, exotic localities, history and so forth. It succeeds mostly when expansive, and is tedious when personal. Fiennes does OK, but is lumbered by an incoherent character who gets implausibly histrionic when he should have been stone cold. Binoche steals the show, as she always does, and won an Oscar for doing so.

Iron Man

Ah yes, the original. Apparently I saw this back in August 2008, but it didn't stick with me. It is superior to the sequel. The climaxes in both movies are unsatisfying as the boss dude is killed off way too quickly.

Iron Man 2

At the Galaxy Cinema on Nguyễn Du with Loan. I enjoyed it, but would have preferred more screen time for Mickey Rourke. There was too much to fit into the time, and it was very dissatisfying that this neo-Vlad got destroyed so quickly. But yeah, something to see.

Infamous

I had put off watching this one for years, as I'm just not that interested in Capote. There is a narcissism at work here that is truly repellent. Still, good performances all round: Toby Jones is convincing, Bullock almost fabulous, Daniel Craig able. Good Sunday evening fare in Saigon.

The Field

Another Jim Sheridan effort, recounting the strong identification of the Irish who stayed behind during the famine and the land, and the generation gap they have with their children. It's OK but failed to grab me as much as his best did. The acting is solid. Brenda Fricker has a marginal role, unfortunately.

El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes)

I found this one by trawling the IMDB top-250: it was parked at number 216, presumably because it won an Oscar. I'm thinking the Inspector Rex fans would like this one, but I somehow didn't really get into it. There's a lot of repetition of the motif of the empty life: the missed relationship, being incarcerated, the murdered wife. Perhaps that covers everyman; unfortunately the central female character is overly passive about these matters, even though she wears the pants.

The Man from Earth

Imagine a parallel universe where the averge script writer was as famous as Tom Cruise and remunerated similarly. Further, that dialogue and argument are prized over explosions; anti-Michael-Bay forces dominate. This is what Highlander would look like in that universe.

I got the pointer from jwz's webspace.

Bladerunner

Rob lent me his DVD of the Director's Cut from 1991 (I think). No narration. Brilliant visuals, camera angles, photography. Irresistible.

No Way Out

I got talking to Rob about Blade Runner and he suggested I see this as another example of Sean Young's efforts in the 1980s. It also features Gene Hackman and a young Costner, both of whom are bigger than the movie. It's not bad, and very 1980s — I don't doubt that it was IMAN's acting in this that won her David Bowie's heart. The tension ramps up, sometimes implausibly and clunkily, but nevertheless resolutely, until it is abruptly terminated by a non-sequitur of an ending.

The Messenger

Worthy themes, similar to those of Brothers, but I didn't get into it. Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton are solid, albeit playing characters not particularly interesting to me.

Welcome

A French flick in the Ken Loach mould. This is the best movie I've seen for the first time in a long time. I think I caught the short at Micmacs, which sketched the bones of the plot, the characters and calibre of the story without making it at all clear how things were going to go.

The main characters are well drawn and their motivations clear. Vincent Lindon is the leading man, and Audrey Dana plays his ex-wife. Occasionally the cinematography is perfect.

I would have liked the backstory to be fleshed out just a bit more, particularly the trek from the Middle East to Calais, how the Frenchman and his wife got to where they are, and to make Mina into more than just a pretty face. These are mere quibbles. As in Micmacs, Sarkouzy is on the screen just long enough to switch him off.

It is unbelievable that France can have so many people in bureaucratic limbo within its borders. For all its faults, is Australia's system this bad?

This movie is somewhat like Lilja 4 Eva with less brutality, allowing some hope for the individual human spirit.

Brothers

It seems that Jim Sheridan can indeed do some wrong. The topic of this one is worthy, focussing on the psychological destruction of Marine Captain Tobey Maguire at the hands of some badass Afghans, and his inability to relate to his brother and wife on return. (His relationship with his father is obdurate.) We are told a few times that Portman is beautiful, just in case we have let her involvement in the mentally scarring Star Wars pre-trilogy besmirch our opinions of her. Gyllenhaal comes out looking the best in this cast of cardboard cutouts.

The plot is quite holey as it is difficult to wring the kind of tension Sheridan is looking for while retaining a grasp on reality; the whole thing falls apart if, for example, we knew what Portman was told about Tobey's existential status (presumably he's MIA, but she's in no doubt that he's dead). Also this fictional military has a quite ineffectual hands-off recovery program.

More show, less painting the past with words please Mr Sheridan. And try to make a movie that outdoes the short next time.

In America

Jim Sheridan is a master story teller, focussing in tight on a very few characters and showing how things are for them. Clearly this is a deeply personal story for him. The acting is quite good, the children particularly excellent, Mateo electric and beautiful. I remember Samantha Morton for her luminous performance in The Libertine, and here she is grittily competent. I would only quibble about the manufacturing of tension, and the slightly stodgy (Irish?) narrative arc. Immerse yourself and ruminate.

Secretary

I remember seeing this when it was released, which must have been sometime in 2003. This is Maggie Gyllenhaal in her break-through role, and she is game and lustrous. Her love interest (James Spader) is a Mickey Rourke-alike, and this is indeed a 9 1/2 weeks sort of deviancy for the new new century. What's not to like?

The Twin Peaks aesthetic is sometimes a bit kooky, a bit creepy, but this is alleviated by a tight focus on the characters, and some of that Lebowksi dreaminess. Maggie is great and I liked how her character evolved; a more sophisticated take on power relationships that is not as readily trivialised as stereotyped feminism.

I reckon this would have made a great stage production ala Oleana, which I saw NUTS produce so many years ago.

Johnny Mnemonic

Who would have thought that Keanu's power animal was a dolphin? This one has a bit of everything, except a plausible plot, characters, continuity, tension. As such it is fine except where it obviously fails to match grasp and reach; it is something of a dry run for The Matrix. Lundgren hams it up well as the preacher, but Rollins is only convincing when aggressive. Keanu markedly improves in his next few movies after this one.

The animation is Tron-ish. Gibson's work is debased as he is usually focussed on the immediate, the local: his characters don't save the world. Also there was a marked lack of sexual deviancy, a central theme of cyberpunk. It could have been worse, but it could also have been a lot more than just a quest.

Those with sharp eyes will spot a frequency counter (or something) with nixie tubes in one of the climactic scenes.

Micmacs

Mr Amelie returns to his kooky childish roots in his signature style. I got a freebie from the distributor via the State Library. I could only make the 12pm screening at the Academy Twin today, and just one other person present. How can they turn a profit on these sessions?

The theme of this one is infantile, and taken on with the moral clarity of George W. Bush: the CEOs of two weapons manufacturers are identified with all the evil machinations of any and all such companies. They get the comeuppance that is so obviously in the offing from the first few frames.

The aesthetic is a return to his classic washed-out colours, ala City of Lost Children. Individual scenes are great, as are the sundry mechanisms and automata. He makes good use of his varied cast. The sexy stuff should be on the cutting room floor. So enjoy things while they're on the screen, and don't think too hard: this is like Amelie but more so.

K-PAX

Spacey and Bridges are in it, so it can't be too bad, right? Right? Well, it just might be. Spacey plays an American take on Douglas Adams's Ford Prefect, a too-human alien apparently compiling some kind of report for some unstated purpose. The plot tries to riff on the ambiguity of unAmerican alienness or (entirely?) American insanity, but falls apart at times as the man is clearly both. Spacey is always a bit patronising, and here he is positively encouraged to be godlike. Bridges does not look right with short hair.

The technicalities in the movie are irritating; for example, if K-Paxian reproduction was as terrible as claimed, the species would have died out, especially with long life spans.

Up

Delightful.

Zodiac

Apparently I saw this with Rob back in 2007 at the Ritz. It must not have stuck. The story and acting are pretty good, though Fincher et al have to massage some tension in there to keep us on the hook. It suffers a bit from an accelerating time-frame and no real conclusion.

Tender Mercies

I got this on the strength of the comparisons with Crazy Heart. Robert Duvall is the leading man here, and given the chance won the Oscar for it. He is excellent, reversing his psycho-with-some-empathy style (in my mind) to play a seemingly decent bloke whose boozing makes him plausibly dangerous. Indeed all the actors are great. I would have liked to see a bit more character from his new wife as she didn't seem to want a hell of a lot. Why did she get remarried? Did she want another child?

I think Bridges earnt his Oscar more than Duvall did here.

Wilde

I saw this biopic at the cinema back in the late 90s with an unlikely crowd. Stephen Fry is very good, as is Jude Law. The narrative arc is a bit lame; this writer's life is the tawdry, tragic flipside of his beautiful and timeless work. Martin Sheen holds up the home front.

Waterworld

Costner as a merman, and Dennis Hopper in his lamest effort yet. As one would expect from the hype when it was released, the narrative/plot is crap, the characters undercooked, and the whole thing is within a hair's-breadth of failure. They should have spent more on the script (as they always should). Generic good guys, generic bad guys, generic pirate imagery, a find-the-promised-land, booty, Rambo-esque rescue effort, etc. that would shame the makers of Mario Bros. There are shades of Indiana Jones and sundry American myths here, as one always finds with Costner.

I guess it is easy to see how Costner's ego got the better of him after Dances with Wolves. His acting here is reprehensible. Rob reckoned the premise is interesting and epically fumbled. It is somewhat like watching the Wallabies play rugby.

This movie is mythical, like Star Wars, and is a mandatory watch even if it is a turkey. The cinematography is pretty good and I did like his boat.

Sleuth

Michael Caine and a fruity Laurence Olivier play deadly games in a country mansion. The piled-up twists are let down by Caine's inability to completely mask his accent, which is a shame as he had me going for some of it. I reckon the stage production would have been superior. Rated at #203 on the IMDB top-250, as it should be.

The commentary on class/migrant relations/condescension in England circa 1970, when there was some pretension to a new classless society, was a bit pedestrian but articulately delivered. The automata are pretty amazing.

Apparently Caine decided to participate in a remake with Jude Law, using a script by Harold Pinter.

Tightrope

Another Eastwood, this time from the early 1980s. The cinematography is washed out, just right for some seemy police work in pre-Katrina New Orleans. It tries to fish for a new angle on the psycho-thriller, but that particular character is shallowly drawn and implausibly generic, along the lines of Malkovitch in In the Line of Fire. The focus is on the cop played by Eastwood, a bit of a down-at-heel Dirty Harry who gets organised with the lady from the rape crisis centre. Arnie plays a similar cop in End of Days; was it never a cliché?

Again, I saw this on the strength of that New Yorker article. Overall OK but difficult to talk up as anything great. One for the Underbelly crowd.

Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries)

I can't believe this is #151 on IMDB's top-250: it is pretty much the definition of arty pretentiousness. Briefly: a black-and-white dreamy life-wasn't-so-beautiful recreation of an old medical professor-ermeritus's life, a character study of an unpleasant sort of bloke. Narrative and plot are mostly absent. It is showy, I'll give it that, but I found no real depth in it, just allusion. Is he cold because he doesn't care about anything or vice-versa? Does this movie tell us anything we don't already know? The women are shallowly drawn, apparently lacking inner lives or anything but material motives for love. Manipulative too. Boring!

It doesn't encourage me to see any more of Bergman's work.

In the Line of Fire

I got sucked into this early-90s Eastwood thriller by an article in the New Yorker about his movies. Malkovich is a good psycho, but I rank him below his contemporaries Spacey and Hopkins. The plot has myriad holes large enough for a plethora of successful assassinations; perhaps the most ludicrous is Eastwood pulling up in a taxi on an otherwise baracaded and barren street, just in time to show us how intel was done prior to computers and save the PUSA. Eastwood is fun to watch, at times, but wooden at others, and while the scaffolding of his later signature moral complexity is assembled, nothing is made of it.

The article is better than the movie, trust me.

Crazy Heart

This feted vehicle of Jeff Bridges's performance-of-a-lifetime took an age to get to Australia. I caught it at 2:30pm on this, a cheap Tuesday, a week after release, four rows from the front of cinema #2 in The Ritz. I'm sure the oldies had their fun up the back.

Bridges is indeed awesome, inflating his character as Mickey Rourke did in The Wrestler, even looking like he'd been drinking steadily since The Big Lebowski to just this end. I'll admit I enjoyed the music, though I can never tell if it's country or western, or whatever it is that Leonard Cohen does.

Maggie Gyllenhaal lit up the screen as she always can, but the script cast a shadow long enough to prevent her being anything interesting. Indeed the narrative arc, the possibility of plot development, was restricted to wondering how the whole thing could possibly conclude, preferably satisfyingly. I don't think Cooper figured this out either. Redemption is popular in the U.S., and probably everywhere that God is thought to be a friend of humanity, and for it to fail as blandly as it does here makes one wish for the grand follies of past times. It couldn't even manage a decent double-dip. These days even failure tastes like success.

Robert Duvall is always a bonus to me, playing those unforgettable supporting roles in great movies like Apocalypse Now and Magnolia. (Didn't these movies show us how to screw up properly?) Here his character is too minor to rescue anything from anything. The IMDB boards are saturated with pointers to his earlier take on the same theme, Tender Mercies, a Beresford effort. It's enqueued.

This movie is worth seeing on the strength of Bridges alone; be placated by the musical interludes! ... and certainly don't read any reviews before you go. Afterwards you can nod along vigorously with Dana Stevens, Paul Byrnes and Stephanie Zacharek. Or not.

The Truman Show

This one just scraped into the IMDB top-250; I guess the next blockbuster or two will push it off that highly esteemed list. I've never been a fan of Carrey and have definitely seen more of his movies than have been good for me. I had the distinct impression that he'd packed in after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so much wishful thinking on my part.

I doubt this is worth watching now that the reality TV bubble has come and gone, but perhaps it will be in a decade or two, when old things are new once more. The movie is thoroughly American, right up to the saccharine ending.

Witness for the Prosecution

Agatha Christie made this for the stage and it shows. Dietrich is weird, unattractive and hackneyed here, a frosty scheming German who spends the dying parts of the movie pretending to be a woman overpowered by her emotions. The occasional good line for the barrister does not make up for the myriad dei ex Christies. I'm sure her fans think it really does rank around #150 in the IMDB top-250, but there's no need to inflict this stuff on the rest of us.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

More dreck from Spielberg. Connery is implausible from the first. Given that this is ranked #100 in IMDB's top-250, I can see the population at large is fascinated by this mangling of mythology, a sort of Lawrence of Arabia for twits. How dumb would you have to be to invest that much effort in traps that are not reentrant?

Presently I'm chugging through Richard Burton's A Thousand Nights and a Night, which is more fascinating for Burton's footnotes than the stories themselves. The narrative structure is cute, and I now see where Salman Rushdie got a lot of his ideas from. Much doughtier fare.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

More dreck from Spielberg. All of the characters are irritating infantile stereotypes, and I fail to see how anyone could consider it fun to know that each problem will be solved within a few minutes, usually by an omniscience blinded only by the requirements of plot. Apparently all Sikhs are evil, unless they're smurfs, in which case they're good because they're fighting with the English Empire... or something. The female offsider whines and squeals like C3PO, but with even less humour, and the child offsider is just plain awful.

The best part of it are the occasional iconic photographs, such as Harrison Ford wielding a whip on a rope bridge, but these are easy to get over.

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Unbelievably #18 in the IMDB top-250. Riffing on all the cliches and motifs of Orientalism, there is little worth seeing here. Harrison Ford is at his wooden best, being marginally less banal than Karen Allen who plays his presumed-shaggable offsider. Totally unsubtle — the baddies are Nazis for god's sake! — but perhaps we can be thankful that it is certain that Indiana shot first and that's the way it's gotta be. Lucas was involved in the production and writing, and it shows: the treatment of anything human is entirely infantile.

It is much better than the recent one, for all that is worth. I remember now why I haven't seen many Spielberg films.

Cool Hand Luke

A Paul Newman classic, perched precisely midway up the IMDB top 250. Not really to my taste. I watched it in two sessions about a week apart, and that might have been why.

The Game

I remember seeing this, apparently five years ago. It's a twist-piled-upon-twist sort of flick, not as successful as Fincher's best but still watchable.

Fritz Lang: M

Apparently a classic, and highly-rated on IMDB to boot (#57). I couldn't get into it.

Schindler's List

Another movie that was huge in the early 1990s that I only got around to seeing now. A great story, well told for the most part. Glad I did see it, for I usually give Spielberg flicks a miss. Ben Kingsley steals every scene he's in and a few in which he isn't.

The Loved One

I stole Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One from mrak's shelf a few years ago, but it must have left little impression: I thought it was all about a pet cemetery. Apparently this movie is more faithful to the novel than my memory is.

Anjanette Comer's Aimee Thanatogenous is luminous, wide-eyed and credulous, the graceful love-interest of the Dr Strangelove-ish Joyboy and English cad Barlow. Cinematically this is very Strangelove, black-and-white, kooky and stylised. It is an unflattering satire of American life, almost unthinkable now.

Se7en

I saw this movie at the cinemas on George Street in Sydney with Lev back in 1996. It was the first R-rated movie I saw in a theatre, and with Trainspotting set my expectations of new-release cinema too high to be satisfied in this epoch. Start with something mediocre, I suggest to the youth of the day. Fincher's other classic is Fight Club, which it seems I haven't seen in five years.

This is Spacey's finest effort, and I was a fan right up to American Beauty. David Bowie's classic industrial-pop Heart's Filthy Lesson plays over the closing credits. I like what Reznor did to it.

Wages of Fear

A French classic perched somewhere in the middle of IMDB's top-250 list. The cinematography and effects are top-notch. Transporting nitroglycerin somewhere in South America makes for riveting cinema. Who'd have thunk it? I grant that the town scenes early on don't look promising.

Fallen Angel

Another Otto Preminger effort (he directed Laura). An overly pedestrian whodunnit with an all-American huckster whose shyterism wears thin quickly. Lord knows why a small-town beauty falls for him.

The Wild Bunch

I'm not much into westerns unless they've got an Ennio Morricone score. This movie probably deviates from the hallowed central precepts of the genre, and so might be some kind of revelation to connoisseurs.

Incidentally I realised while watching this that Stanley Kubrick never made a western.

Dial M for Murder

I saw this a while ago, but can't remember when. I think this highly-rated Hitchcock left me a bit cold.

Dances With Wolves

This movie was huge when I was a kid, the Titanic or Avatar of its day. I'd put off seeing it as Costner is an all-American clown, and Waterworld made his name mud. (I'm going on inuendo here, I haven't seen any of these movies.)

To my surprise this overly-long-but-not-long-enough epic didn't drag. The narrative arc was too predictable — I knew the wolf was going to get it from the get-go — but the cinematography and editing redeemed this a lot. They make the prairie look both alluring and adversarial, justifying the bonding and xenophobia of the native American tribes and the way Costner develops a relationship with them. The score was more intrusive than I expected.

Even so, Costner is a ham actor. He overplays the American pioneer self-stereotype: the rugged individual worthy of respect who everyone truly respects, and gushes respect at everyone and everything around him. There is simply too little contention after he is initiated into the tribe for it to be any more realistic. I was hoping they would explore the politics between the native tribes, the local economies and also the civil war itself. Why was the soldier's fort where it was? — after the initial suicide-run the confederacy is MIA.

Worth a look. The frontier is a grand American myth.

Das Boot

Kyle told me this was worth watching back in 2004 or so, and I can now, finally, agree with him. The version I watched over two nights was the director's cut, dubbed in English. I feel a bit cheated by that, but at 3hr 20min I won't be rewatching it any time soon.

Well, what's not to like? Somehow it being slow as hell does not drag, and unusually for cinema it encourages the imagination by alluding to, but not explaining the implications of, various mechanisms, protocols, political views and so forth. The acting is pretty good, characters generally solid, the direction sure and cinematography fine.

Sweet Smell of Success

Not sure why I got this one; perhaps just because it was there to be had. Ah yes, it is number 10 on one of IMDB's lists of noir. Well constructed, I guess, but one really has to like scuttlebutt and muscular hustling to get into it. It is too much of a snotty society piece for the dialogue to be affecting.

Leave Her to Heaven

Gene Tierney in colour, in the upper reaches of IMDB's noir list. I think she was upstaged by on-screen-younger-sister Jeanne Crain here, maybe because her character was a frosty whiny psychotic bitch who we saw coming from the earliest frames. The blokes were mostly limp and the plot a bit fanciful. The cinematography was occasionally great when it wasn't fake. Probably a cut above the average Days of our Lives arc, and not generally suitable for any other audience.

White Heat

Over several evenings. Another of IMDB's highly-rated noirs. I didn't really get into it.

Heaven can wait

Another Gene Tierney, and doesn't the colour film just love her. The plot is a bit too this-is-my-life to get excited about, though there are a few set pieces I found funny. I'm guessing they lifted those directly from the stage play. The Age of Innocence this is not.

Laura

Another from IMDB's list of noir. Had me going the whole time, though long-time murder-mystery addicts might find it straightfoward. The lead murderee, Gene Tierney, is gorgeous and cuts a plausible swathe through a long list of suitors. Clifton Webb is authoritative in his role as Oscar Wilde clonee in full Importance of being Earnest mode.

The production is not far from a stage play, relying on dialogue and acting, poise and grace where special effects dare wander now. I am flummoxed by IMDB's rating system: this garnered 8.1 out of 10 from more than 13,000 people, and is still somehow not in the top-250.

Shadow of a Doubt

Sifting down the IMDB noir list, I found this, an early Hitchcock. It is a bit too slow and all-American for my tastes. Joseph Cotton is creepy, and not altogether unlike Jude Law. Teresa Wright is wide-eyed and luminous in this performance, the year after she won an Oscar (how young she must have been). The comedic relief was too robotic, and the climax a let-down.

The Narrow Margin

Another noir from the early 1950s. I have no idea why I picked this one in particular; perhaps because one of the actresses is also in Kubrick's The Killing. The acting is a bit patchy, the plot a bit predictable, modulo a twist of a very short duration.

Casablanca

As good as ever. Can't believe I haven't seen this in five years.

Gomorrah

Well made, I guess, leaving aside the tangled, unresolved plot. Gangland reality TV?

Léolo

On the recommendation of Pete R., who somehow discovered this obscure French-Canadian film from the early 90s. A lyrical coming-of-age story. I am sure I missed most of the point. Occasionally worthy, regularly scatalogical, wry and unearthly: "I dream and therefore I am not".

The Night of the Hunter

What a strange movie. Rife with biblical allusion and a psycho who wouldn't be unfamiliar to the Coen brothers, this is a sort-of Hansel-and-Gretel where the witch is a warlock who comes to them. Robert Mitchum nails his role as the murderous preacher. The black-and-white cinematography is amazing, and directing it must have taken it out of Charles Laughton as he didn't try to do it again.

This was the last of the IMDB top-10 noir movies for me to see. Definitely worth a look, though it doesn't completely hang together (nor separately).

Balibo

Of the feted Australian movies of last year, this is the best I've seen yet. The story itself is a bit thin, but it is powerfully articulated and beautifully rendered, and it comes as no surprise to find David Williamson's fingerprints on it. I wish it had a little less melodrama and a bit more contextualisation; what were the roles of Portugal, of the U.S.? Did Britain really pay for the helicopters? What else did Gough Whitlam say before bodies were broken? — and so forth. Hamish McDonald feels likewise. Hmm, is he the last journo working at Fairfax?

The story of Roger East was unknown to me. Could they not have found a place for Jill Jolliffe within the film too?

It demands a follow-up, a sequel of sorts, on the liberation of East Timor, and then perhaps another on whether they've got their hands on any kind of justice yet, or ever will. Last I heard the East Timorese government had opted for a blood-under-the-bridge approach, but it seems the wind changed almost immediately. Apparently Australia still has troops there, at least according to Wikipedia, and I have to wonder whether the dog or the tail is wagging on that front.

Femme Fatale

Stephanie Zacharek rated this somewhere in the bottom 24 of her favourite 25 movies of the previous decade. (Let us be mainstream about decades and calendar years ending in 0.) Well, what can I say... Rebecca Romijn-then-Stamos giddily gyrates and the boys go ah... the plot is MIA and de Palma's cinematography is excellent. The only substance in this whole picture was probably a Class A.