Melodramatic. Good acting. impressively hard to sit through some times. Tied up too easily.

7
Hated Allan Balls other film. 

and the last of the holiday viewing :

La Terra Trema (1948) - Luchino Visconti's overlong, episodic, predictable but remarkably well made film set in Aci Trezzi, a small fishing village on the east coast of Sicily focuses on the trials and tribulations of the Valastros family in an environment of exploitation of working class fishermen. Unlike his later, more grander and operatic films, this one is strictly in the neo-realist fashion, with non-professional actors who are actual locals playing all the characters.

Whilst the story and character arcs are fairly predictable and cliched, the manner in which the film is made lends it an authenticity that is undeniably involving. There is also a distracting voiceover but I believe this was inserted for the benefit of the italian public since most of the film is in a rural sicilian dialect.

7.5/10


This Sporting Life (1963) - Richard Harris in one of the greatest performances of all time in what is also one of the best british films of all time. Lindsay Anderson's searing depiction of rugby player Frank Machin, whose real life is not as successful as his sporting life, mixes a formidable exploration of working class angst and the ups and downs of fame and celebrity with a tragic love story.

Its probably a bit unfair to make the comparison since Harris is his own man, but his performance definitely reminded me a lot of Brando from Streetcar and Waterfront. Almost matching him is Rachel Roberts as Machin's widowed landlady and love interest, with the scenes with both of them on screen being a showcase of great acting. But Anderson's contribution isnt just his work with the actors, the movie being a visual tour de force in pretty much every scene of the elliptical narrative that is connected together with impressive transitional editing.

8.5/10


To Die For (1995) - not quite black enough black comedy by Gus Van Sant that would have been better served by going more over the top with its material. I also found Van Sant's mixture of styles in the presentation of the movie way too distracting and unnecessary. But, Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix do put in very good performances and some of the potshots at tabloid celebrity are decent enough.

6-6.5/10


Twentieth Century (1934) - early screwball comedy from Howard Hawks but it still manages to match the farcical levels of both His Girl Friday and Bringing up Baby. Like both those two films, I found that it couldnt quite successfully sustain its over the top tone for the entirety of the movie but when it works, its very very funny. Carole Lombard and John Barrymore put in pitch perfect performances as an aspiring actress and her egomaniacal Boradway producer, respectively, trading some very clever dialogue at breakneck pace.

7/10


I Vitelloni (1953) - good early Fellini following the life of five thirty somethings in a small italian town, all of whom are likeable and distinguishable characters, albeit cliched. There's just something there about this period of Fellini's career that manages to engage you with his filmmaking, unlike his later more bloated and self conscious movies. Nino Rota once again provides an excellent score to the proceedings, making the whole thing quite enjoyable.

7/10


Vivre Sa Vie (1962) - probably the most accessible of all of Godard's movies, the movie is essentially a 12 segment collation of a young parisian woman's descent into prostitution. Anna Karina is very touching in the main role, and she had to be because Godard lingers on her face for extensive periods of time during many of the segments. Despite the subject matter, the movie's tone is fairly playful and self referential, the lightness of touch actually working in its favour until the misjudged ending which lacked the sense of gravitas it needed to work.

7/10


The Piano Teacher (2001) - well, theres sexual repression, theres extreme sexual repression and then there's this. The main character in Michael Haneke's extremely disturbing film is a more than repressed piano teacher who also has sadomasochistic tendencies. This is very uncomfortable viewing, Haneke doesnt pull back during any of the scenes depicting his character's behaviour but more importantly, it's just very hard to connect with the main character.

Isabelle Huppert, in a very brave performance, does manage to make you empathise with her character but its not enough given the extreme nature of the character. The ending, which should leave you disgusted, barely registers a reaction at all due to this problem.

5/10 

damn tags... 

IMO it's a sort of continuity of the logical progression of the trend with Central European movies.

Fucked up stuff supposed to shake the viewer doesn't mean a movie is worth watching.

I don't remember the ending anymore even.

Hopefully the trend goes more toward Mike Leigh, have you seen Happy Go Lucky, guys? It has its annoyances and stupidities, but as a whole it's a good piece. Telling of quite ordinary people for once, yet being interesting and very lifelike, capturing some of the life's magic. 

I watched the Cheech and Chong movies recently, no idea why I did not encounter them much earlier. They are two dopeheads going through .. uhm ... dope adventures. The first one was great fun, but the others very bland and stupid (except for ET with his extra testicle, I laughed so hard).

Yesterday I watched Loaded Weapon 1 ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107659/ ). Great fun. Generally very plain and stupid humour, but every 5 minutes or so a laugh-blast. It is like a persiflage of movies like Hot Shots or the Naked Gun. Sometimes it seems the actor's fun playing comes through. The scene where Samuel L. Jackson imitated that ugly bunny face girl for example. If you got a rather quirky sense of humour and are not a pretentious culture nazi, try it. 

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Really really bad, and it never ends. What the fuck? Similar to Forrest Gump but they took Tom Hanks and replaced him with a plank of wood. Also, where is Gary Sinise? 

I agree, I didn't enjoy it at all. It meandered, and took an extremely long time to get nowhere. I compare to to Aronofsky's The Fountain, another really long, pretentious, experimental love film from a talented director, except that The Fountain was far more interesting. 

Slumdog Millionaire

I was just happy not to be watching Benjamin Button. Also, this film is excellent. The plot is contrived, sure, but when seen as a modern day fable, that isn't necessarily a negative. It like it was dragged towards a modern pop-culture setting though. Also, dialogue is a little rough, and the end a little rushed. Those were the bad points, the rest is almost universally great. 

also, yeah Nynort, I see where you're coming from, but while they're both undoubtedly pretentious, the Fountain is interesting and mysterious (to me at least) and truly experimental, while Benjamin Button is just an emotional-fast-food, pseudo-intellectual oscar-fishing bucket of cocks, devoid of all merit.
Also, the Fountain looks pretty, and I like pretty pictures.


Sex Drive
I am something of a shit-teen-movie connoisseur as you may know, so when I say this is the greatest shit-teen-movie of the last few years, I hope you appreciate the weight of my sentiment. Us shit-teen-movie fans are simple beasts, as Hunter S. Thompson once said: "Too weird to live, and too rare to die", so I'll keep it simple:

Hilarity: Very high
Boob Count: Fairly Low
Stifler Count: Zero, but they got a guy that looks just like him and got him to play the same character. 

Madagascar 2: Boring, stupid, boring, clichee crap. Mild chuckle at best. Too much singing, crappy music. Might be fun for kids, but there are many so much better movies (for them). 

Crimson Tide : Enjoyed this very much, lots of suspense and felt very realistic (No idea if it is actually realistic). Good acting all round I thought.

U-571 : Yeah so I have a submarine fetish at the moment :P Historical inaccuracies aside I thought this was as good as crimson tide, but with weaker acting on the whole. Its always good to see Bill Paxton in a movie, and I was rooting for him to start shouting and flailing his arms around (game over man, game over!) but sadly he is quite subdued here.

The day the earth stood still : Seriously WTF, this remake was shit. Reeves basicly puts on his Neo acting profile but doesn't do anything other than talk. I wanted to throttle the kid by the end, and the female lead was quite forgettable but certainly better than the rest. I've not seen the original of this film so I cannot compare...

Rocknrolla : I heard this was Guy Ritchies return to greatness but overall I would call it OK. There are some moments of greatness (All involving Russians) but not enough to save the film from mediocrity imo. 

Recent Watches
#2666 posted by DaZ [80.41.151.213] on 2009/02/18 14:08:36
Crimson Tide : Enjoyed this very much, lots of suspense and felt very realistic (No idea if it is actually realistic). Good acting all round I thought.

Well, not really. I had the pleasure of watching this one with my brother who was a petty officer in the U S Navy for a decade and he was one of the guys responsible for one half of the code and pull pin that executes a launch. I got to enjoy</i. reaching over every ten minutes and telling me what was wrong with the current scene.

Two facts stay with me.

1) The petty officers of his position are armed at all times. When a senior officer gives them a command that breaks the nuclear protocol, the petty office is obliged under law to kill that officer.

2) Whenever a submarine loses communication for any length of time, they are obligated to return immediately to the port of origin and not execute previous orders. So if a Hackman did what he did, he would be coming back in freezer storage not as a court marshal. 

I did wonder about that, it did seem a bit strange that they would even consider launching nuclear missiles on possibly incomplete or cancelled orders.

Made for a good bit of suspense tho =) 

nuff said 

forget I said anything 

Rocknrolla : I heard this was Guy Ritchies return to greatness but overall I would call it OK. There are some moments of greatness (All involving Russians) but not enough to save the film from mediocrity imo.

Until the shit that is the essence of Madonna is cleansed from his soul expect mediocrity, and that is assuming she hasn't entirely sucked it dry and shat it our of her mummified ass. 

I treated myself to on my birthday after that last quote. 

I picked the icon that looked most like a shit. 

That movie is strangely Bergmanesque, btw. Not to be pretentious about it to justify watching it because you all know I have taste for shit, but it really does remind me of both Wild Strawberries and the Seventh Seal.

Cast Away?

Not a big Hanks fan here. I mean, I don't hate him, I'm just indifferent to his acting. Now Sinise as Lt Dan, fuckyeah, that was the only thing that made Gump remotely tolerable. 

If you haven't seen BubbaHotep, it is about a mummy who sucks people's souls from their ass orifices and then shits them out which destroys the souls for all eternity. Which is pretty much Madonna's MO. 

think Starbuck meant Swept Away.

and Daz, as far as submarine movies go, you cant go past Das Boot. 

But I am not gonna sit and watch a film for..what was it? 9 Hours? Is there some sort of sensible cut I could have a look at though? :P 

What! You, DaZ Boot, have not seen the movie yet?
Seriously not? My world collapses. And there is no icon to express my feelings.

The director's cut is 3 1/2 hours or something, just pause and return the next day. 

Spirit,
Petty Office Tom loves that movie, and he went apeshit happy when he recognized the villain in Beerfest (he played the First Officer). 

what nitin said, I meant swept away. I actually watched a good 20 mins of it too. Oh and I saw Audition last night, that is not the ideal date movie.