Nitin's review reminded me... i happened to sit through "Dukes of Hazzard" recently (don't bother,) and I noticed that that movie had a Charger vs. Mustang chase... I wonder if the choice of Mustang was inspired by Bullitt. (I have read that the original choice of the Charger in the TV show was due to Bullitt.) 

hopefully during this event.

http://www.viff.org/tixSYS/vifc/filmguide/event.php?EventNumber=1309 

but then again what do you expect from Mr Lynch?

pope, please post your thoughts if you see it.

Last night I watched Requiem for a Dream and was a little disappointed given how much I'd heard about it.

It's a definite case of style over substance and I found Darren Aronofsky's take on addiction a suprisingly empty film beneath all the flashiness.

Aronofsky employs every trick in the book, and a thousand others that arent, to hide the lack of depth in his material, but it's not quite enough. What does give it power though is the extraordinary performance by Ellen Burstyn and an amazing score by the Kronos quartet. Decent, but I didn�t find it to be any more than that.

6.5-7/10 

did you ever see the fountain? I agree with you on the lack of substance in Requiem for a dream, but the fountain baffled me so much that i couldn't possibly comment on whether it had any depth at all or it was just style over substance taken to a whole new extreme. What the hell happened? 

i'm getting it this month, so I'll post when I see it. 

has anyone seen spidey3 yet? spidey 2 rocked and I hope this is of a similar level. 

Would like to. I did enjoy 2 a lot. I think it really got the 'comic book villains are great yet tortured people' thing down in a way the batman movies basically crapped out of. And the central theme about the ordinary versus the heroic - the original premise of the spiderman character - was played out seriously enough to inspire thought and feeling, but not so it plodded into pomposity
And the almost-silent shot of spidey swinging across frame in front of the lit up empire state is the most tactful response to 9/11 I've ever seen.

The combination of villains in 3 is interesting. Sandy bloke I really don't know much about. AFAIR he's a rather secondary henchman type thug. Hope I'm wrong.
The conclusion of the goblin arc - nicely tying the three movies together - could be dramatic or could just turn into angsty rubbish.

The black costume, however, interests me for a more particular reason. It was a story arc concluded in the only Marvel comic I actually ever bought as a kid. I wasn't really as interested in spidey as the other strip in the comic, but it's odd to see it in a movie now, compared to all the other pop culture icons that have been mercilessly cinematised over recent years which I didn't give a shit about the first time round. 

kell,

exactly. Every scene felt like a comic book, which I think is very hard to do, from the speeches to the fight scenes to the humour.

Although I like Batman Begins just as much, its almost for the exact opposite reasons. But those two by far are top of the comic book pil for me. 

Science of Sleep - I personally regard Eternal Sunhine as one of the best movies of the last decade and its obvious while watching this that Charlie Kaufman was a major contributor to making that what it was.

Michael Gondry indulges in some impressive off the cuff visuals, and he gets a committed and goofy perfromance out of Gael Garcia Bernal but it felt too much like someone knowing what they wanted to but not knowing how to do it.

Frequently hilarious, but as a whole, it didnt quite work.

6.5/10 

One of the things I liked about it, besides the humor and imaginitiveness of it, was the way the "tone" of the movie kept changing. Especially near the end of the movie, it seemed to shift smoothly from moment to moment between a the tone of a comedy about a quirky guy, to the tone of a drama about a mentally unstable guy.

The treatment of dreams were well executed, I thought. It's hard to put something on the screen and not have the clarity of the photographic image work against the goal of presenting a dream world full of symbols instead of objects. But I think this movie succeed in that regard. Also in terms of the constantly shifting narrative of dreams, where elements, locations, and people persist even as the underlying story of the dream reforms itself moment to moment, I thought the movie captured that feeling well.

So in conclusion, I guess the "feel" of the movie worked for me, even if the execution faltered in other ways. 

Normally these type of movies aren't my cup of tea, but this one is pretty charming and funny. Nice to watch while you're sitting at the pc and doing stuff. shake your body!

6/10 

The Haunting (1963) - Decent old fashioned horror movie but some dodgy acting and scripting lets it down somewhat. The impressive cinematography and atmosphere result in some nice eerie moments later on and a couple of the characterisations are very interesting. In the end though, it does feel like a similar but inferior version of The Innocents.

6.5/10



Brute Force (1949) - Jules Dassin is one of the forgotten great directors and this is another quality film from him. A pessimistic and bleak prison drama with Burt Lancaster and Hume Cronyn as standouts, it�s a very good example of how Dassin turned predictable, cliched material into genuinely involving stuff. Helped along by the excellent cinematography and a good, if overwritten, script by Richard Brooks, Dassin builds to a tight climax that is probably better than the whole season of Prison Break. It's slightly let down by some unnecessary flashbacks, which very much come across as something the studio got involved in, but overall it's on the same level as Dassin's other movies from the same period.

7.5/10 

Walkabout (1971) - Nicolas Roeg's debut has the tagline "Probably the most different movie you will ever see". That's an apt description but it is also probably the best australian movie not made by an Australian. It's not for everyone, a lot of people will most likely find the lack of any plot, narrative or resolution a big hurdle. But if you're open to something different and don�t mind the lack of narrative, it's quite a worthwhile watch.

Its basically about the journey of two british children lost in the outback and their attempts to get back to civilization with the help of a young aborigine boy on his Walkabout (the aboriginal rite of passage that a young boy takes before entering manhood). Roeg uses that to create an interesting portrait of the differences between civilizations, the ability of youth to overcome those differences but not really understand them, and the feeling of being 'lost' no matter where you are. Its mainly a very visual film, with little or no dialogue, Roeg using his trademark editing technique to good effect. Its not on the same level as Don�t Look Now, as that was a lot more focused, but it has the same disctinct style.

7/10 

Good review, yes there is a real sense of being lost in Walkabout, it's all a bit bleak in a way.

But more importantly jenny agutter is a total hottie, go see it. 

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236027/

If you like De grønne slagtere (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342492/ ) then you will also like this. I watched it danish with english subtitles, was ok. The actors are so great and the humor really dark. 

...showing my age, but I saw Walkabout during it's original release period (regional). My first real movie experience. Two scenes are still clear in my mind. Of course I didn't realise what a hottie Jenny Agutter was at that stage, that realisation didn't come till Logan's Run :o) Must revisit Walkabout, thanks for reminding me nitin. 

out of interest, which ones ? 

The meeting between Gulpilil and the kids, I thought it was funny but I couldn't say why back then. The final vignette, it made me sad but again I couldn't articulate why back then. 

Talk to Her - its not quite the flat out masterpiece that All about my Mother was, but this is still a very impressive movie from the unpredictable and fresh Pedro Almodovar. He's probably one of the few directors working today that can take a story into territory you don�t see coming.

Anyway, this one is about 2 men who share a friendship whilst their lovers are in a coma at a hospital and although I don�t quite like where it ended up at the finish, it's well acted, excellently written and extremely well made. It has the usual Almodovar blend of quirky and humorus but awkward and uncomfortable situations with eccentric but connectable characters.

And the film within a film is pure gold.

7.5/10 

The Dreamers (2003) - Bernardo Bertolucci is undoubtedly a very talented filmmaker, but this is a pretty good example that talent alone doesnt result in a good movie.

Bertolucci's tale of a young american film buff in france who makes friends with a local brother and sister that share his love for classic films, all set against the backdrop of the student riots of 1968, is beautifully shot, skilfully made and is conceptually very interesting.

But while the first 30 mins or so is a great nostalgic look at the period, intercut fabulously with scenes from classic french new wave films, the rest of it dissolves into a frank, uninhibited, but more importantly, dull dissection of sex and politics.

Each charcater represents a type rather than an individual and whilst that allow bertolucci to be very self-reflexive, it also makes the whole thing quite heavy handed.

Pity, because done correctly, this could have been a great film.

On the plus side, the extremely good looking Eva Green spends plenty of time naked.

5/10


The Naked City (1948) - Jules Dassin's police procedural/noir might seem old hat given how many times it has been imitated but the tight direction and extremely well done location photography still raise it far above most other attempts in the genre. An inconsistent voiceover is the only real misfire as everything else clicks together like clockwork.

7.5/10 

On the plus side, the extremely good looking Eva Green spends plenty of time naked.

She is the beaut. I wonder if you noticed in Casino Royale when she smiled sometimes her face would get convoluted and her upper mouth would become long, thin and even lizard like. Not exactly attractive in those instances.
I'm willing to bet as a first rate actress she has practiced this expression to perfection in order to show a vulnerable side her good looks would otherwise hide. 

Underworld : Evolution - better than the first, but that wasnt exactly hard. 1 maybe 2 decent action scenes and the rest was dull and uninteresting exposition.

5/10 

Ugh. I knew nothing about it before watching. I felt Eve rather unconvincing (not badly played but badly written/characterized/introduced). She seemed to be supposed "one of the mass" in the beginning and hard to break to see the "truth" if I understood it correctly. Well, the movie totally fails on that. Maybe because it is too easy to see-through, dunno.
I also really disliked the cheap "flashbacks" and "omg important memory, turn the music loud and fade in/out to black". Some parts were really cool for sure.

5/10 from me. Left me highly unsatisfied and disappointed. It could have been so much better I think. 

AFAIR, the author of the original comic was not pleased with how the makers of the movie trivialized the motives of V. In the comics, he's got revenge on his mind but also the ideal of anarchy -- in the movie he's more of this cold-blooded killer, who also has a heart, and isn't that so touching?