Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005) - Zhang Yimou's latest falls well short of the greatness of his earlier works but is still quite a decent film.

In this tale of a Japanese man who attempts to reconnect with his son by going to China and filming a particular masked opera, the plotting is a bit contrived and the whole thing too melodramatic, but the direction is strong and the acting even stronger.

But it looks like this was only a temporary return for Yimou to his ealrier type of films, as his next one looks very similar to Hero and House of Flying Daggers.

7/10


The Big Heat (1953) - Above average film noir from Fritz Lang which is a bit too sentimental in parts to really work as a noir and also has a not so convincing Glenn Ford in the lead role as Detective Bannion who tries to singlehandedly battle beauracracy, corruption and crime at the same time. Its derivative stuff, but it works to an extent due to tight direction and good performances from supporting players, especially Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame.

6.5/10 

The Conformist (1970) - Along with Raise the Red Lantern, this was another movie that I'd been wanting to see for years. And like Raise the Red Lantern, it was well worth the wait.

Bernardo Bertolucci's film is a headspinning experience thanks to the dizzying visuals and the even more dizzying narrative structure. It's not hard to see why Scorsese and Coppola adore this movie about a member of Mussolini's secret police who becomes a fascist not out of greed nor out of fanaticism, but out of the desire to become 'normal'.

The visuals by Vittorio Storare are on par with his work on Apocalypse Now, the camerawork is so fluid it will make your average cinematogrpaher cry. The music is not on the same level but is still very memorable and fits the action on screen like a glove. And beneath all the style, there is a lot of substance, but due to the complex narrative and the speed at which it moves along, it's quite difficult to take it all in.

That's basically my only complaint, along with some dodgy dubbing, I would have preferred a slightly slower pace so that certain events were given more time to register an impact.

8/10 

Fallen Idol (1948) - It's not quite in the same league as that other more famous collabration between Graham Greene and Carol Reed, The Third Man, but its still a great film. Apart form a dodgy and overly bombastic score and the pulling of a punch at the end, there is not much wrong with this.

The acting's great, especially from the child actor, the direction' tight and the script's almost perfect in his thriller that's made not only from a child's perspective but also within a child's world.

8/10 

but your comment,
Apart form a dodgy and overly bombastic score

reminded me of Ladyhawk, a decent fantasy flick from the 80's that is close to unwatcheable now because of a terrible score. 80's synth hasn't aged well. 

except in scarface 

Pirates of the Caribeann 2 - Dead Man's Chest

Bigger, louder and extremely duller. I cant believe it took this long to come with something as tragic as this.

4/10 

the product placement nolonger dictates the action.

candlelight dinner and her fucking phone beeps, she reads the sms and... - how BOND is that? HELLO SONY FUCKING BULLSHIT MARKETING. also, ford paid 15mio pound for having all their stuff appear in the movie. 

And I'd hardly describe the above examples of product placement to be integral or detrimental to the action/plot. Product placement isn't a bad thing in itself until the businesses responsible start demanding certain things from the film, as they did in Die Another Day [i.e. the Ferarri's that fell out of the plane weren't allowed to be seen to be 'damaged' which lead to the ridiculous shot of them poking out of a swamp without a dent or scratch in sight].

Most film/tv productions get sent various items by companies like Sony, AOL etc. which they're free to use as props or background dressing, because both the companies and the film benefit from it. Looking round my surroundings right now I can see Sony, Puma, Xerox, Antec, Specsaver, Panasonic, BIC, Microsoft, Logitec and Duracell products to name a few so I'm not sure why some people get so offended when they see a product in a [contemporary-set] film. Of course you're going to notice the brand of a phone when the camera is positioned in such a fashion that you can read the phone but my point was that in Casino Royale, the product placement is inoffensive. 

how BOND is that? HELLO SONY FUCKING BULLSHIT MARKETING. also, ford paid 15mio pound for having all their stuff appear in the movie.

The next Bond is set to be funded by sushine, rainbows and moonbeams without any hint of nasty Capitalism tainting Britian's onliest, I mean hardest, working civil servant on his exploits.

Yeap, it is all being funded by BBC so you might want to bring a pillow and blanket with you to snooze during that game of baccarat being played in real time. 

Ninotchka (1939)- Starts off well enough and manages to survive Greta Garbo's introduction, but eventually her montonous delivery and extremely one note performance derail the whole thing and the script gets cheesier the longer the movie runs.

5/10

Superman Returns - Kate Bosworth is terrible as Lois Lane, Kevin Spacey is far too camp as Lex Luthor, Brandon Routh is passable as Superman and the script has as many bad bits as it has good bits, but yet it almost works.

Full credit to Bryan Singer for turning lacklustre material and talent into a reasonably entertaining movie.

7/10 

that should read "Kevin Spacey is far too serious as Lex Luthor..." 

Bah now I totaly dont love you for dissing Silent Hill. And Lynch too.

...oh btw nitin's Silent Hill review would be 3/10 

Superman Returns, 7/10? That's a pretty generous score, but then again it seems like I'm the only one who really wasn't impressed at all by this. I don't want to go off on a big rant because it wasn't that awful, it was just completely... weak.

I guess Brandon didn't have much to work with but he seems like a bit of a plank. Spacey was completely underwhelming, and Lois Lane, who gives a shit? Why would you even bother with that girl. I mean Superman could rape her so fast she wouldn't even notice anyway.

I usually like the big budget action / superhero things, but they're usually more fun I guess. Or I'm old. 

i'd have said silent hill was better than superman, but then, i was never a fan of superman, and silent hill has cool monstrous things. 

I just found it completely impossible to engage with this film. Infact I'd say it made me feel exactly the same as V for Vendetta, which also inexplicably failed to interest me. I can't say why for either film, but they both left me feeling "well, I don't want my money back or anything, but I'll actively avoid watching it again." 

see 'mallrats' for why lois can't have superman's baby. >_< 

speedy,

I wasnt bagging Lynch, I quite like his stuff. I was just trying to make the point that Silent Hill wasnt as incomprehensible as some people were claiming it to be. Anyway, I agree it looked cool and had cool monsters but I found it very dull. It wasnt scary and it wasnt much of a movie, well to me anyway.

starbuck,

Agreed that all three leads were average to terrible, and I can totally see why you called it 'weak', but I dunno in the end I enjoyed it.


text_fish,

I hated v for vendetta, but like I said in repsonse to starbuck, I ended up enjoying this despite lots of flaws


necros,

hehe, I thought of that scene in Mallrats as soon as that was revealed :) 

I hated v for vendetta, but like I said in repsonse to starbuck, I ended up enjoying this despite lots of flaws

Assess whether I like a movie or not based upon how attractive I find the lead actress even if the movie is cramming a message that is (in part in V, but not entirely) bilge. So V for Vendetta and Funny Girl two thumbs way up, Shakespeare in Love, boooooo! 

I couldn't enjoy a musical no matter who starred ;) 

Good movie--I think. I haven't been that confused since I watched Donnie Darko. I rewatched the end a couple times and that helped. 

the commentary track clears a bit up, especially if you use it over the last 15 min.

Its a bit too overcomplicated for the sake of being confusing but yeah at least someone thought through the time travel thing a bit :) 

i liked primer... and i think i need to watch it again. 

I thought both of the commentaries seemed to touch more on the making of each scene and not much at all on the story. In particular, Carruth seemed unwilling to share his interpretation of the story. 

Is anyone else as pissed off as I am over the recent torrent of shitty megabudget fantasy being churned out by Hollywood's bean counters and marketing men (and usually helmed by some visual effects supervisor masquerading as a "Director") to cash in on the success of LOTR and Harry Potter?

I mean the enormous hack job that was last year's Narnia was offensive enough, but it seems that this year we have a contender for "The most blatant attempt to create the next big fantasy franchise by getting the rights to film a shitty series of books and pouring all the money into marketing to try to convince the kids that it's another LOTR", when in actual fact the film is by all (early) accounts excreble garbage. Yes, that's right - Eragon. You see it's clever because it's "Dragon" with the D replaced by an E and it sounds like "Aragorn" and the movie has like elves and made-up languages and shit seriously you'll love this shit.

The sad thing is, because of the obscene amount of cash spent on the marketing, this film is gonna make a metric fuckton of money regardless of it's quality, make the talentless plagiarist spoilt arrogant little rich kid author of the books even richer than he already is (he only got his books published because Mummy and Daddy own a publishing company and they wanted their little Christopher to be happy and stop stomping his feet and throwing his books around the room). Have you even seen the books? Seriously it's fucking Star Wars with a few names swapped out and Jedis replaced by "Dragon Riders".

It's this line of thinking that is making New Line go ahead and rush out The Hobbit on the cheap and another (made up) LotR prequel that they somehow retain the rights to, all the while exluding Peter Jackson from having a chance to make it because of an unsettled lawsuit he has with them regarding withheld profits from the first LotR film's DVD sales.

What. The. Fuck.

To be honest, after LotR I anticipated the torrent of mediocre knock-off copycat shite that we'd be subjected to (I mean it's not like I have to watch it or anything), but I'm just getting tired of all this "me-too" hack bullshit that's now suddenly flying off the bookshelves and clogging up the muliplex. 

There was a three minute sequence of Eragon before Family Guy this week. The dialog, oh my God, did it stink! The least you can do when writing dialog for fantasy is to avoid phrases that anyone should be able to identify as contemporaneous. That someone paid to do this is just pathetic.

oh, it's on! Brrrr ...

I have never noticed the works of the
author even when browsing through Science Fiction stacks at the bookstores until the ad blitz from this movie occurred. There is a glut of heroic epic fantasy out now, and I prefer the ammoral sword and sorcery genre. I hate heroes, unless they are Batman.