Titanic - pretty much what I expected.

James Cameron takes every opportunity to showcase his technical expertise, even before the ship starts to sink, and while he is doing that it is pretty spectacular stuff. But as soon as the focus shifts to the thinly sketched characters and their even thinner story, it dissolves into tedium.

Still, the ship sinking last act is very well done.

5.5/10


Twin Peaks season one - Very impressive, had never seen this before and it holds up quite well. I have no idea how this made it on to network tv (let alone become popular), as this would probably still be a cable show if it was running today.

Anyway, apart from some dodgy acting, there is a lot to like here. Its a bit of a retread of Blue Velvet for David Lynch but the atmopshere, music and characters are first rate. Dale Cooper is probably one of the best tv characters in any show, nice work by Lynch, frost and Kyle Maclachlan there.

I've heard mixed things about season two, but I'm looking forward to it.

7.5/10 

Danny Boyle directs well, but once again Alex Garland fails to deliver as a writer. Why they decided to work together again after The Beach is beyond my understanding.

The first half is a pretty cool sci-fi thriller and shows plenty of promise. The second half is absolutely terrible and full of conveniently unexplainable phenomenon, which never seam to serve any purpose other than to extend the film by an hour.

To be honest, the entire premise of the film is flimsy at best so it was wrong of them to take it as seriously as they did. 

I have to say I completely change my mind.

It is still probably the perfect example of a love or hate it film, but I now think that its definitely a great movie. In fact, I dont think Terry Gilliam will ever top this, there is no way he will be able to exercise this much control over a movie and there is no way his movies can turn out as brilliant as this if he isnt allowed that control.

Dont know what changed during the time I last saw it but I now find it to be a fantastic combination of Orwell's 1984 and the antics of the Monty Python group.

It is possibly a bit too long, with one dream sequence too many, and it does lose its way a little in the second half, but this time around I found the opening 80 min or so to be terrifically sustained brilliance.

Jonathan Pryce is excellent as Sam Lowry (a role that was actively pursued by Robert De Niro) and De Niro himself runs with the role he finally got, playing a subversive heating and cooling engineer wanted by the government. The support cast are also great.

Also, maybe it was the print I saw last time, but on the new dvd I really dig the world Gilliam has managed to create. The retro mechanical bureaucratic society is filled to the brim with nice little odd touches.

So yeah, well worth a watch, but make sure you get your hands on the uncut 142 min version.

8/10


The Glass Key (1942) - fairly decent version of Dashiell Hammett's book, although it was better adapted by the Coen brothers in the great Miller's Crossing.

Still, this Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake starrer is pretty good straightforward noir with some interesting characters and events. Some of the stuff Alan Ladd's character does would not fly today without some sort of explanation or redemption tacked onto it and the lack of those make for refreshing viewing.

7/10 

Just saw Grindhouse.

There is a grenade jump in the movie.

For real. 

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) - fairly good movie from Sergio Leone, the start of the famous dollars trilogy, but it's not quite on the same level as the two films that followed or of the movie it was a remake of. It feels a bit too rough and low budget compared to either of For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad & The Ugly or Yojimbo but the stylish direction and Ennio Morricone's excellent score make up for that to quite an extent.

6.5/10


Borat- I know I'm in the minority but I found this to be totally unfunny and also more surprisingly I was not even shocked or disgusted, just...indifferent I guess.

2/10 

!!!!.... I thought this had more of a real plot than the two sequels.... of course the plot was stolen from Yojimbo but Yojimbo and Fistfull are two of my favorite movies...

Compared to "A few dollars more" and "good, bad, ugly" I thought Fistful had the most lean plot, while the sequels had the same spirit but too much fluff...

Drunk as you might expect, but these are my sober opinions nonetheless. 

agree on the plot comment in comparison to few dollars more and the GB&U, but Yojimbo handled that aspect better I thought.

I just think the style is better developed in the later movies and in my eyes, they are better for it. 

the GB&U soundtrack rules the Universe, so on that bases alone, even if the movie was a three hour shot of a field of grass growing it would still be in the top ten great movies of all time.
Fortunately, it has some excellent character acting (hence the title ;)) for the viewer who may be tone deaf and can't enjoy the music. 

but I also think the soundtracks to the other two dollars films are also pretty impressive, and a bit underratd. 

Planet of the Apes (1968) - charlton heston tries his best to derail the whole thing with an awful performance but Frank Shaffner's precise direction and the simple yet complex premise overcome his antics. The plotting requires more than a little suspension of disbelief but it's worth it because the script raises some interesting ideas, even if they're not explored as well as they could have been. The character of Dr Zaius is probably the most intriguing, the others feel a bit too one dimensional. There is some great imagery here, much more than just the famous end scene, and the score by Jerry Goldsmith is also pretty effective.

7.5/10



La Femme Infidele (1969) - I think this was remade recently as Unfaithful which I havent seen, but Claude Chabrol's original is a very stylishly made old fashioned suspense film in the vein of Hitchcock and Clouzot. The acting, writing, and direction are all first rate and the whole thing feels very economic without any dead space. There's actually nothing wrong with it but it does have a cold feel to it which keeps the viewer at somewhat of a distance.

7.5/10



Rocky - It isnt the movie that should have beaten out Taxi Driver, Network and All the President's Men but on its own it's still fairly impressive stuff. The first thing you notice is how well shot it is, it definitely has the right look for the setting of the movie. Next up on show is the impressive script, hard to believe it was written in 3 days by stallone, because most the major characters are excellently written. The acting is good too and the only thing that lets it down is the anticlimax fight at the end coupled with a very corny and badly executed final scene.

7.5/10 

Fistfull of Dollars

I should really rent those movies and watch them again. The only time I've seen them was when I was about 10 years old, and I don't really remember much about them except for Eastwood chomping on a cigar and shooting a revolver. Although I do remember being smitten by the music in For a Few Dollars More.

Drunk as you might expect, but these are my sober opinions nonetheless.

How was the party, metl? The raw beef at Musawa was... interesting. Afterwards we hit up a bar on Haight St, which turned out to be the second gay bar we went to last weekend. Incidentally, I'm forced to disagree with the notion that gay bars have cleaner bathrooms than other bars (at least the two I've been to). Anyway, it was cool meeting up with you, even though I didn't get into town until much later than expected. 

the party was a bunch of drunk thirty-somethings i didn't know (girlfriend's coworkers.) But they kept handing me drinks, which was my eventual undoing.

I like how my spelling is still perfect even when I can't string two thoughts together in a coherent sentence. 

The Lives of Others - well made, well acted, generally well written german film about the period in east germany's history when the stasi operated to ensure that citizens didn�t participate or operate in "subversive" fashion. Rather than trying to tackle the issue by displaying the impact on the general population, it focuses on 3 characters in particular (a popular writer, his actress fiancee and the stasi agent who keeps tabs on their affairs) to bring out the state of mind that was prevalent at the time.

First time writer/director Florian Donnersmarck does a commendable job in all departments but at times gives away his lack of experience with some contrived plotting and functional, but non-imaginative, cinematography. His strengths are obviously more towards storytelling than the visual side of things, but this is still quite an impressive debut.


7.5/10 

So I finally saw 300, and I was wondering if anyone else noticed this: when the kid is beating up the other kid at the beginning, it appears to be a shot-for-shot clone of the scene where Ed Norton beats up Jared Leto in Fight Club. Anyone? 

I think you watched Fight Club too many times Metl :) Not that thats a bad thing! 

The Motorcycle Diaries - As a portrait of the "why" behind the transition of Che Guevara from almost medical graduate to cuban revolutionary, it's fairly low level stuff. To be fair though, the movie does cover a period where it appears that Guevara himself hadnt worked that aspect out just yet, so its not something that could be readily communicated to an audience anyway. However, in the second half you can see the wheels turning, but its not an entirely convincing depiction.

As a road movie, it works a little better, mainly because the stunning backdrop allows ample oppurtunity for good photography. The acting is good, the direction is reasonable, and the script is decent even if it can never really escape the main pitfall of the road movie, the lack of a narrative and the feel of bunch of vignettes stuck together.

Still, I found it a good watch despite the issues although the effect on the small screen is probably not as effective.



7/10 

you might find this documentary of interest, much of it pulled from interviews with revolutionaires who knew him. No New Agey Hollywood sanitation that both old school Marxist and AntiCommunist find to be nauseating.

Che; Anatomia de un Mito

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3564213335176871572

Interestingly, I read that Redford was interested in producing Atlas Shrugged at one time. The man's brain cells must be in a constant state of war with one another. Fortunately, Randal Wallace, the BraveHeart screenwriter is on board to write it and Jolie will be playing Dagny Taggart. 

atlas fucked 

no I dont, but mabe I'll pick up some after my trip to south america later in the year. 

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) - extremely disappointed. James Dean is good, albeit heavily mannered, but the rest of this is severely dated, almost nonsensical and totally unconvincing.

Nicholas Ray tries his best with the material he has, but there is so much wrong with the script I dont know where to start. It's extremely heavy handed, contains a large number of caricatures, has some terribly hokey dialogue, and above all has such a simplified approach towards its themes that you wonder why they even tried to address them.

Ray has made some great films, but this is not one of them.

4.5/10 

I recently got into this series and I love it so much. The interesting english, the characters, the imaginative swear words. Very nice! I'm at S02E05 now. 

Curse of the Golden Flower - Zhang Yimou's return to the wuxia genre is thankfully a much better effort than House of Flying Daggers and on par with Hero.

Supposedly China's most expensive film ever, it is indeed very very opulent, every shot showing where the money went. Yimou matches the opulence with an operatic greek tragedy and extravagant action, something which will not be everyone's cup of tea, but I found it to work quite well.

What makes it work is Gong Li, doing what only great actors can do in taking a nothing role and turning it into the most important part of the movie. Her performance helps the complicated and highly convoluted plot fit in with the environment of the film.

Yimou paces and builds beautifully, but falters at the end with a climax that is just too long and drawn out. Even so, this is still quality entertainment.

7/10 

just fucking great, I grew up with that stuff. Did you ever see the pilot for the american version of the show? Man did that suck... Lister was just your standard wholesome american lead character, Rimmer didn't even seem that annoying, Holly was played by Daphne from Frasier.

But er, keep watching the good stuff, I love series 5, some amazing episodes there, 'Gunmen of the Apocalypse', and 'Back to Reality' are absolute classics... 

Zelig (1983) - I think woody allen's middle period from the late 70's to the late 80's resulted in some remarkable stuff. And this is another one of them. Spinal Tap is probably funnier, but Allen's attempt at the mockumentary genre is still nothing short of genius.

The mockumentary takes a look at the life and story of Leonard Zelig, a chameleon like man in the 1920-1930's who had the ability to change his appearance into that of the people surrounding him, and the reaction of the doctors, media and the general public to his ability.

Combining newsreel footage, fake "documentary" footage and present day "interviews" with real essayists and nobel prize winning writers, Allen's movie is a remarkable technical achievement. It is also brilliantly written, playing it straight all the way, even when the situations are anything but. There is more creativity and talent on display here than in all of Allen's films of the last 10-15 years.

8/10 

Blood Diamond - As is usual with Edward Zwick movies, this is too long and has an uncomfortable mix of message movie and action adventure, with the message part being very heavy handed and dodgily handled at best.

What it has going for it is that it works pretty well when it sticks to being a blockbuster action movie and also Leonardo Di Caprio's outstanding performance. Di Caprio probably has the best written character, albeit with a requisite redemptive character arc, and he singlehandedly gets the movie through all the dodgy bits. Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly do their best but are limited by their stock standard one dimensional charcaters.

Zwick seems most comfortable with the action scenes, which are well choreographed and shot, rather than with the effects and consequences of a civil war on an entire poprulation, but this is far from the disaster of The Last Samurai.

6.5/10