Dolemite (1975)

Let me just start by saying that I don't recommend watching films on YouTube. There are many moral quandaries involved, mainly that you're not paying directly or indirectly to watch and it's not the way they were intended to be viewed. That said, there are some rare gems available on YouTube unavailable in this country and most countries frankly; 'The Man from Hong Kong', a prime bit of Ozzploitation as featured in 'Not Quite Hollywood', the great documentary Aussie B-movies and the movie, i'm talking about today, Dolemite.
Anyone who's seen the video for 'Got Ya Money' by ODB, will instantly recognise scenes from Dolemite, as the video is completely made up of clips from it. Not that it bares explaining, Dolemite is the story of a kung-fu pimp/poet/hustler released from jail to bring down an evil gangster, the infamous Petey Green!
I've always been facinated by Dolemite because I love rap music, black comedians and blaxploitation. Dolemite was a character /persona developed by Rudy Ray Moore, in a similar way to Richard Pryor's Redbone; he was in the same league as Petition and Red Foxx, with less a joke based routine but rap patter-style poetry and sweary couplets about 'his name and fucking up muthah-fuckers being his game'. He was a gangster rapper 20years before the fact and as such, is a beloved hero in rap songs, in the same breath as Tony Montana. Moore even recorded with 2Live Crew, Big Daddy Cane and Snoop.
I don't know why this film appeals to me so much. I guess it's just pure brain candy... there's not much else it could be. It's poorly directed, poorly acted, the boom mic is in so many shots - it should get an on-screen credit... the boom is in this movie more than Judi Dench is in Shakespeare In Love; it's poorly edited, the story goes off on a tangent and doesn't recover, i could go on but I really liked it because there's swearing and fighting and it's easy to watch and all that negative stuff I mentioned before?... well, that just adds a 'rough gem' touch to proceedings; like it was probably made in a week in South LA with non-actors and non-craft craft-people but it's such a silly film, it adds to it.
Watching it now, Black Dynamite steals wholesale from Dolemite except B-D is trying to be funny and is but Dolemite is trying to be an serious action movie and is charismatic and inoffensive enough to get a pass...
So give a hand to a strong black man,
Madder and Badder than White Klan,
No clown or white man could keep him Down with hate or spite
Cos His movie knew how to de-light
Where men would rap and swear and fight
Admittedly women were objected
And stylish direction was rejected
But you could not disrespect or slight
That badman mutherfucker called Dolemite!!!

I watched Dolemite (1975) on YouTube.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Tooth Fairy (2009)...

Knife in the Water (1962)

I would have been happier to have waited to watch an other Polanski movie until maybe next month but the bods in the picking dept. at LoveFilm are more unpredicable than Fate it's self.
Knife in the Water was Polanski's debut, made around 50years ago. To be fair, it must have been quite striking when it came out. It's very restrained and subtle, more so than anything he's made since and it usually works the other way around with creativity.
In a way he's intuitively set-up conditions perfect for a debut- a micro cast, basic plot, small space/set/location.
The plot of 'Knife...' is fairly familiar; in fact, it's almost a simpler retread of his 3rd or 4th film - Cul-De-Sac; it's about a couple made of a older man and a younger wife who pick up a younger man hitch-hiking as they go to their boat, presumably for the weekend. Does it seem obvious what might happen? I'm not supporting predictability but i think when you make something where the audiences preconceptions are weighty, you can play with that and that's what Polanski is doing here.
The young man is sullen, obstinate and naive. The older man is brash, competitive and imperious. The woman is self-aware, sultry and premeditated. All of them love playing mind-games and all throwing their intelligence around.
The sense of suffocation is brilliant in that it's never alluded to but these people have no place living in such close quarters yet they just want to show off and bumps heads to show who's superior.
In the end, you get the feeling that this kid has had an easy escape from this couple and I feel that the film would improve from ending 5mins earlier. But who is in to improve this level of black comedy claustrophobia class?...

I watched Knife In The Water (1962) on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with On Tour (2010)...

The Black Godfather (1972)

You don't know the internal battles I go through that stop most of my posts from being about Blaxploitation movies. I'd write about them 2-a-week if i could. Blaxploitation, how I love thee. Maybe someone people's lives stems from the post-ironic hilarity and I can appreciate that but i actually want to applaud most of these films as great meat-and-potatoes cinema. If I had my own cinema (Only a lottery win away-I already know where it would be), we'd show these films every Friday at midnight. These movies are just pure. They keep their story and plotting simple and keep characterisations on high importance. Or at least higher than story or plot; characters are always memorable. They are at least the in premier league of a exploitation movies. By it's very definition, exploitation movies feature either violence, sexuality or other adult content. All Blaxploitation movies feature all those things. They feature style of violence that is gritty and real but never gratuitous. They're sexually vibrant colours without being pornographic. They teach us how we SHOULD swear and they give realistic portrayals of drug-use... and selling. Naked women manufacturing crack sounds glamorous. These movies make it look ugly.
Today, I watched a very curious example of the genre, The Black Godfather. No, it's not the Black version of the gangster classic but you'd be within your rights goals that guess; there are Blaxploitation versions of Get Carter, White Heat and isn't Foxy Brown- just Miss Marple with guns, drugs and prostitution?
The Black Godfather is just a simple story of a black gangster who mobilises Black Panthers to rid his area of the Mafia so they stop selling drugs in his community. 'Numbers' and prostitution are fine by him. It's basically Black Dynamite without the jokes.
I want celebrate this film because it obviously been made with a small budget; it's not handheld photography but there's no action photography or 'set-pieces' either and yet it's eminently entertaining and watchable, this film about a gangster with strict scruples.
So the acting is more than a tad hokey and the thought of a successful criminal kingpin that WON'T sell drug seems far-fetched- I like hearing cool black guys swear and watching them beat-up bad white people. And the music in these movies are the best. James Brown, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield. The music in this film by Martin Yarborough could take a Pepsi taste test with any other film, you care to mention.

I watched The Black Godfather (1968) on LoveFilm Online
My 2011 in Movies will return with Knife In The Water (1959)...

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

It's been a while since we've watched some Polanski on the blog, but today we're watching his most infamous film, Rosemary's Baby. Maybe it's so infamous becuase it was released the year before Polanski's own bride- Sharon Tate and their child were murdered by the cultish Manson Family, a bitter case of life imitating art but Rosemary's Baby's appeal has never seen it wane as an iconic horror classic.
Last of the old school moguls, Robert Evans- brought Polanski over to direct this from a bestselling novel, and it marked the first time Polanski had directed in America and the first wrote on his own, although he'd always had a hand in the writing and this would be his 5th film.
Maybe it's the subtext that the film is caught between these 2worlds at the end of 60's - the young embracing the emergence of European astetics and the old who could remember wartime America. The young couple are bleeding cool with her super-short, super-iconic Vidal Sassoon haircut and his professional acting career- ideals that would have been strange even 10years before vs. the old pushy old guard that 'know better' and nosey and yearn for simpler times.
Yet there's the delicious irony being that this couple generally do want to conform to having a nice house and for the wife to stay home with the home and family, while their elderly neighbours are Satanic witches who are always trying to drug you so they can live forever!!! 
Mia Farrow in her most famous role (FFFFFFF YOU WOODY.) plays the mother to be and i'm tempted to say, she's not very good at acting at this point if you couldn't pass it off as admissible naivety in this part. She's either shy and blank or out of her gore with paranoia. I'd like to level the same accusation to John Cassavetes, who playing her husband, and actor. I suppose playing a successful stage and screen actor as yeoman-like workaday shipbuilding is an original take but i'm not convinced. Need to watch some Cassavetes movies, he reminded me to add his work on the old LoveFilm list. The really great stuff in this movie are the old people; actors like Ruth Gordon- nosey and omnipresent, Patsy Kelly-she doesn't feature heavily but makes a strong impression as would-be Satanic nanny and Ralph Bellamy, who i've been certain was the Devil since I saw him famously, casually use the 'n' word in Trading Places.
But I think Rosemary's Baby's appeal continues because Polanski weighs the paranoia perfectly; i was poo-pooing Rosemary's perceptions as pre-natal depression and then anxiety isn't afraid to be over-the-top and 'arch', in film's concluding scene.
I think as a horror thriller, it quite old fashioned and genteel but then I've never been pregnant with son of Satan. I have had kidney-stones, if that counts...

I watched Rosemary's Baby (1968) on FilmFour
My 2011 in Movies will return with The Cars That Are Paris (1974)...

Read My Lips (2001)

I'm trying to spread the Audiard thinly over this year...  It's been 2months since I watched The Beat My Heart Skipped. I wasn't as take with that as i was with his colossally majestic, A Prophet but as i said before, it was pretty darn good and A Prophet is an extremely high watermark, in my eyes. For me, Read My Lips is another step down 'The Beat...' But is still incredibly original and Audiard has sweated out another modern-day example of Stanislavsky-status acting- this time from lead actress, Emmanuelle Devos.
Read My Lips is the story of an relatively deaf and dowdy office manager and the ex-Con she hires to assist her at work, played by Vincent Cassel. Gee... Vincent Cassel. I love that man. I even love saying his name in an overt French lilt, 'Vin-senca-ssselle'. In this movie, he's kinda 'playing-the-wall' - he's not really do that intense brooding sex asteroid, he normally plays; his character in this is just a bit of a impotent doof. A wannabe Cassel. I that it means something that he can tone it down and play a lighter version of the usual alpha-male you might expect but... hmmph. I guess you could argue that this is not this film is less about his character and more about Devos' character, Carla. Carla is a woman struggling to have the things, that seem to come naturally to others like love, excitement and respect. She feels constantly self-conscious because of her hearing disability. So when she's given the opportunity to have an assistant, she immediately sees it as an opportunity to use to hire some exciting companion. Preferably tall and handsome, what she get is this malnourished excuse for a Cassel, who she's fully prepared to dismiss until he tells her that he'd been released from being inside.
Inside where? She asks.
What are you shitting me?, the bad-teenage moustaches Cassel says. Snort. I can't imagine any French person using the phrase 'are you shittng me?'. The subtitling dept. at Pathe must be having me on.
But they develop this bond, where they begin to depend on each other and though the air of potential coupling is likely, their relationship develops from a working one to a friendly one and so on. But Devos is really brilliant. She just gives everything and is completely self-less in this part. She's half-manipulator and half-victim.
In the end, I guess what's lacking in the film is not that it's necessarily aimless but that the plotting seems obtuse, there's this thing about stealing some local hood's money, in the 3rd act and Carla has to use her power of lip-reading to get answers so they can steal it but you don't really care. It seems wrought and over-the-top and unlike the tone of the rest of the film. But I'll keep going back through Audiard's ouvre and it means he does get better with each proceeding movie....

Thor (2011)

I took the plunge of not putting myself through the squinty-fiddley torture of wearing 3D glasses and went and saw Thor in 2D. I really don't know why I waited so long. Oh yeah... I'm a sucker. Marvel are a really great force in Hollywood movies at the moment. They have a pretty great pedigree of turning out these great big hulking epics, year-in-year out. Okay, the ones made at Fox are pretty sucky but well pretty much every movie made by Fox is. Exceedingly better are the recent slate of in-house productions made by Marvel themselves and then are given back to studios like Paramount and Universal to distribute. It incredibly unusual for movies to be made like this, it's like the idea of JK Rowling paying to make a Harry Potter movie herself. She could probably afford to do that too... That said it's incredibly risky putting your own money up and I'm certain that has a positive affect on the writing and direction of these movies.
I guess the most curious thing about Thor is that it was directed by Kenneth Branagh but that's one of the strokes of genius, they do at Marvel- they get strong personalities to work on their movies like him and Justin Theroux who wrote Iron Man 2 and they're making the 3rd with Shane Black. It's good becuase these guys are not used to working in the comic book medium and that means it keeps the production line, fresh.
Thor is great example of this. It's completely different stylistically from Iron Man, obviously more fantasy-orientated. Branagh approaches the fantasy stuff in a very operatic way, where everyone bellows their lines and takes this comic book hero and turns into a broad fantasy environment like a Lord of The Rings. It's an entertaining story of the bratty Thor, spoilt and entitled who is banished to Earth by his pops, Odin and brother Loki starts setting his own sights on ruling. Meanwhile on Earth, a group of New Mexico scientists are trying to figure out who this Thor is and where he came from... Chris Hemsworth is lovely as this boisterous he-managed and the sort of stuff you're supposed to hate in movies like fish-outta-water humor, is fine because he comes across so well. Anthony Hopkins gets to shout and wear and eye-patch. Tom Hiddleson is actually really good playing a tricky character like Loki, who's equal parts spiteful and empathetic. I'm glad Ray Stevenson and Idris Elba are successful in this movie, Stevenson in particular, channelling Brian Blessed is great fun and a complete departure from what he usually does. We also get a sneak introduction to someone intergral to The Avengers movie, halfway through the movie. The girls inc. Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings don't get much to do but then they are girls and as such do smell. That's kinda the tone- this is the kinda stuff that 8-12yo boys love.  And though, I'm no Whedonite - I'm sure his The Avengers will be great not only but mainly because of the Ruffalo playing the Hulk. Think about it- Ruffalo riffing with Robert Downey Jr. Even I can bust out a fan-boy squee for that....

I watched Thor (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Read My Lips (2001)...

Freakonomics (2010)

I think when you write stand-up, something you use is what I call 'relative logic', when someone is telling you something that makes enough sense for you not to question it. I'm trying to think of a universally memorable stand-up bit. Like when Bill Hicks is talking about tripping on mushrooms while driving and he sees the police officers in his wing mirror - 'How's small are Yoouuu!?'-it's believable but not likely to be true but it illustrates his point about organic drugs not being a serious threat to society and they just make you look and feel silly.
This is what Freakonomics is to me. On the surface, to me - this was 90mins of pseudo-economics of entertaining bullshit. Don't take that the wrong way. It's very provocative asking obtuse questions about society and the way it conducts it's self. Freakonomics was/is a wildly popular book written by 2 Stephens - academic economist Levitt and writer Dubner and by the law of Hollywood is when you make a popular cultural property, they have to make a movie out of it. Even if it's a non-fiction pop-economics. But in a genius move that communicates the non-connected episodic style of the book- the producers decided to asks some of the most prolific documentary makers of recent times to make 15-20min segments based on hypothesis from the book. We talking Morgan Spurlock, Alex Gibney and Andrew Jarecki and the whole thing is 'compare'd' by footage of Levitt and Dubner made by Seth Morris. This is like the documentary makers equivalent of The Traveling Wilberys. Gibney is Dylan. 
I'm cool to the idea of people explaining economics this way because i worry that people will try to find answers in something like the topic of for example 'how your name will affect your life' instead of a provocative thesis on cultural relations and race, but all these segments work really well and are eminently entertaining. From the comedic style of Spurlock to the intensity of the Gibney piece on corruption in Sumo, it keeps the film refreshed and lively. The 2 Stevenage pop up in each one and they are both the best people to explain these concepts, especially Levitt becuase he's makes it simple not watered down.

I watched Freakonomics (2010), on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Read My Lips (2001)...

La Dolce Vita (1960)

I came to La Dolce Vita, being curious about such an influential classic and having recently seen 8 1/2, curious to get more of a flavour of Fellini. I thought 8 1/2 was all well and good but it was a little aimless- like it was procrastinating about the matter in hand... but that's almost forgivable since that's basically what the film is about. Maybe I was naive but I thought La Dolce Vita would be more.. focused?, not a magnification of everything that was wrong with 8 1/2 or if i have to be polite, everything i didn't like.
Clocking in at an extreme 3hrs, this film seems like the narcissist's director's cut of 8 1/2, if this film hadn't come first. It's Marcello Mastroianni gadding around Rome, smoking, wearing sunglasses at midnight, romancing and falling for some of the world's most luscious ladies and politely donating his love to some of the world's most desperate women. You know the deal. There's something very wierd about why Mastroianni makes for an attractive man. He looks like a chubby faced Alain Delon, he has this intense gaze but it looks less likely he's concentrating, more like he has an acute migraine. Probably what the perpetual sun specs are for. You should stop all the espresso and fags, mate. But then it DOES work for him. Who is I to complain?
Again, Fellini takes another interesting idea, the emergence of the 'paparazzo' and showbiz journalist and COMPLETELY forgets to use it and investigate it. Why do that when we just spend swathes of time hanging out at private parties, listening to overt philosophical conversions and getting wasted. Admittedly these things do happen and surely as fun is fun, as any designated driver will tell you - drinking and talking shit is not a spectators sport and in fact, there is nothing more sobering than watching people having a good time unable to join in.
But y'know, this is all immutabally beautiful to look at, of course. Everything is perfectly photographed and lit. The way the female actresses move, almost seems balletic but I'm afraid this is the negative intonation of 'style over content'. You can make the most astetically beautiful movie but i don't think you can make it over 3hrs long. It's exhausting to watch because you have to concentrate on this particularly dense and at the end- nothings really changed and we haven't really learned anything we didn't know...

I watched La Dolce Vita (1960), on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Freakonomics (2010)...

Arthur (2011)

Movies like this make me look crazy because It turns out that despite all the signs saying I should hate it, it seduces me and i really like it. I'll tell people and they'll give me the 'you're so full of shit' look and swot me away. But really despite the damning facts- it's a remake, it's been relatively sanitized and it features Jennifer Garner, think people are forgetting 2 things. One - Russell Brand. I will concede that the dude is a bit played out and marriage to Katy Perry is not great for your street-cred and he's gone a bit Hollywood but i think, lots are quick to remember that he has certainly paid his dues- he did a lot of tv and radio for a long time and he did stand up for even longer. I saw him in 2005 and he's the funniest stand up i've ever seen. He's no overnight success but he's no hack either. He's actually funny and he's the only guy in recent times to make stand up sexy since Eddie Murphy.
Two- Peter Baynham. Now I'll concede Brand has never been consistent in all his endeavours but Peter Baynham is like a comedy King Midas. Alan Partridge, The Day Today, Brass Eye, Borat. He's like a Welsh dynamo, integral in revitalising British comedy and now he's spreading his magic to Hollywood for Sacha Baron Cohen and now Brand. I'll say if Arthur had turned out shit, i would have blamed anyone but Baynham but this is not the angry comedy you might expect from him, this is all quite light and airy. Now since this is an American studio comedy, it's extremely unlikely that he wrote every line- it's directed by Jason Winer, behind the successful tv comedy 'Modern Family' (never seen it) and Brand will probably adlib but my boy must have wrote some of it right? I actually think Winer must be responsible for a lot what works with the tone of the film. There must have been a lot of pressure to make a dirtier comedy because they're in vogue but this is didn't feel like this was sanitized; more that the original was unnecessarily salubrious- I mean, Liza Minelli as a hooker? Who wants that?
To my detractors - I will give you that Helen Mirren is no John Gielgud and no amount of dry spiteful barbs will redress the lack of that great Sir but as my much as that part was about a very subtle English way of care and affection via scalding irony, i wouldn't discount the comic effect of a old Shakespearean-don talking about winkies and pricks but Mirren is very good at the straight-faced warmth and affection.
I just don't think this movie is guilty of that many missteps. I think Brand does an unnecessary impression of Dud at certain points but I found his romance of Greta Gerwig actually heartwarming and not forced or false, that they felt like people who had genuine respect for each other built on a basis of trying to support the other person not simply a sexual attraction. But what do I know...

I watched Arthur (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Le Dolce Vita (2011)...

Fast Five or Fast and Furious -Rio Heist or The Rock's Goatee Rocks (2011)

So the score so far with this series is the first was crap (though it improves with repeat viewings), the 2nd one was worse - the 3rd one, I missed and the last one was pretty good. I could have referred to them by their given names but the filmmakers masochistically have given all the films the same name (except the 2nd one, that was just masochistically shit...) I've basically only liked one of the previous 4films, so why have I been looking forward to seeing this for months?
Well one major reason is it had a trailer that i never tired of seeing and I saw it a lot because of... *points around the room at all the previous posts* all this.  Mainly the part where they go over the cliff and listening to what people say always made me smile but then these are very unpretentious films.
Well...  they are and they aren't. A lot of the writing is so wooden and pulpy, that you could chop carrots on it and things generally blow up, smash or... explode? and then, sometimes we just like sequels not necessarily because we like the characters but because we know the deal and what to expect and it's comfortable. I think a lot of filmmakers forget that with a sequel comes a lot of freedom to build on whats come before; you can make something with less exposition and more time to spend on character and story. The most beloved sequel (probably) is The Godfather Part 2, a film that practically makes very reference to the film before and explores and builds exponentially on it. And I'm not even a Godfather fan but that's the way to do it. The best thing about the last movie was that it was wall-to-wall action because it didn't have to set anything up; we knew all the characters and it was a better version of the first one as far as I could tell.
This one, the 5th, is not as good as the last one. It's has a great 1st 30mins, it jerks around for an hour and then makes a triumphant victory lap on the last 30mins. I will say that whoever's idea it was to throw The Rock into the mix, for this one-Great ballsy idea. Dwayne 'the wrestler formerly known as The Rock' Johnson is probably my favorite modern action star. He's got the physical thing but he's also got a delightful acting range where he does light comedy and the tougher action too. I don't think he should be doing Disney movies but i don't think he should do morose violent shit like Faster (not part of this series, but the way...) but he fits in like a glove here and he's great at playing surley, which i don't think he's done since he left being The Rock. He gets the most cliché wrought lines to say and delivers them like butter wouldn't melt. More stuff like this, pally. And I dig that they bring back most of the secondary characters from the other films, like 'the gangs all here'.
Given the choice- I'd suggest watching yesterday's TT3D, this weekend if you can but Fast Five is honourable 2nd place...

I watched Fast And Furious 5 (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Arthur (2011)...

TT3D-Closer To The Edge (2011)

I don't watch sports. I watch a lil rugby-I know enough to enjoy, not enough to know what's going on. The only consession I generally make to sports is the sport documentary but that's mostly based on the documentary side. But I've been looking forward to seeing TT3D - Closer To The Edge since I heard about it... days ago. It seemed like a true exciting prospect - all the exciting death-defing racing in 3D. I know Jack about motorbikes or any variety of racing but i could bet it would be thrilling 3D or not. But then I didn't really know what to expect either - would it just be a 90mins of fluff, destined to be a demo-reel for 3D tv's and BluRay players?
I'm pleased to report it's a completely different kettle of fish. Now I don't want to misdirect you- all the heart-stopping,  petrol head, 200mph shit is there in full effect when the time comes but the filmmakers prime the noobs like me with the delightful story and antics of one, Guy Martin. Guy is just a good dude, if you catch my drift. Just a simple good guy with a lot of character and charm and integrity who does this one thing, and does it to death. Sometimes, the dudes in life might seem stupid in their actions or the things they say but just aint got time for the bullshit of bullshit, they're focused. But then they're the funnest people to be around because they're happy because they've found their purpose in life and don't sweat the small shit. So I still don't know shit about Moto TT or whatever but i know Guy Martin is the man. He's cheeky and mischievous but a horrendous physics and mechanical nerd. He's like a BBC3 Fred Dibnagh, down to the accent. At one point, he starts pointing out the weight system used by the SteadyCam operator to his Father (a former racer himself) and asks the cameraman how much the unit is worth and he says '14.'
'1400 pound??!'
'£14 thousand.'
'-Fook off.. '
Which brings me to my next point there must be a fair part of this film, maybe 20-30mins at the start- where you are watching people sit around and talk drinking tea, etc... in 3D!
I don't know...  that just appeals to me in a silly way.
But then when it comes time for the racing, that's when the film comes into it's second wind, as this super stylish chase movie as we race over and over the Isle Of Wight, the most jagged dangerous race track probably ever.
But the key is (and potential action movie writers heed this...) the action racing stuff would get tired so quickly this you didn't care about the sincere guys risking it all. When people get seriously hurt, you feel it and you worry like you were related.
The makers of this film did so well, it's a cut about any sort of stuff you see on the documentary channels like Discovery and they pretty much pull off a nice balance of analysis and narrative...

I watched TT3D-Closer To The Edge (2011)   at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Fast And Furious 5 (2011)...

Gainsbourg (2010)

What is it about the French that they can just make these movies that have they great fantasy element in film that are not based in not realism but not swords and scorcery-fantasy? I'm talking about the movies of Gondry and Jenet/Caro, where these things are set in plain situations but they extrapolate these crazy elements out of this.
Johann Sfar is a new star on that list. You don't see this on the poster or trailers but Sfar has made a music biopic about Serge Gainsbourg with puppets, animation and other creative imagery. Now, I'd feel nervous about events thinking about trying to do that but Sfar is so self assured that, it seems normal that the hero has an imaginary friend/alter ego made out of plaster Paris, you wonder why Ray Charles or Johnny Cash didn't have them in their movies...
I didn't come at this movie out of love for Gainsbourg, simply love of the music-biopic but this blew away all my preconceptions of what it would be like; i thought it would be a serious take on a French national hero, a Parisian version of Ray or Walk The Line but it's... well, it's partly that but then it's mostly like a comic book story of a singer and songwriter who can seduce women with his song. A pervy Pied Piper, if you will. There's a lot of music in the movie but there's more of an onus on the film to tell the story of this guy love affair with women and life, in general. Sfar is less interested in covering all the important bases of Gainsbourg's life (though I'm sure he does) but journeying with a mad bad philosopher to see what made him into the man he was. Sfar could have answered that by tweeting the solitary word 'Womens' but i'm glad he didn't.
I knew this film was a classic from 5mins in; following young 10yo Gainsbourg as he paints porn, talk shit to Nazis and practice his rap on life models was pure bliss and though the film never returns to the great heights of the first 20mins, it's still a lot of fun for the rest of the 2hrs as the man changes women more times than Jordan changes men. He is literally in a new relationship with a new woman every 20mins- guaranteed or your money back.
And even though, it does kinda taper out by the time Serge goes Reggae, i'll take that as a face value that Gainsbourg was probably past best by that point.
I think what I really responded most to was that, there's pretty much nothing depressing event that cripples the guy like in most of these things. Hell, Gainsbourg's biggest grips with life is that he has a droopy eye and a massive conch and ears. He doesn't feel guilty for hurting the women in his life and lives fearlessly in terms of drink and smoking. He doesn't repent and probably died with a Gitanes in his mouth and one between his fingers. He smoked so much they could have called the movie 'Je T'aime Gitanes'...
Please watch this-it's supreme creative filmmaking and a new talent at work.

I watched Gainsbourg (2010), on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with TT3D-Closer To The Edge (2011)...

I'm Still Here (2010)

On my blog, I try to make each day about something completely different to the day before. I can say that unequivocally, I'm Still Here is completely opposite to the Peter Sellers movie from yesterday. I almost went to pains to illustrate that Sellers was a man with a strong sense of self, that he hid in characters and impressions. Joaquin Phoenix on the other hand is a actor whose personality is so much a part of all the parts he plays, like him in Signs isn't such a jump from him in Gladiator. Maybe. My point is that he never really mixed it up that much- he always played troubled young men. So the idea of him playing a vastly over-the-top version of himself is mixed blessing.
Because he is so terrible and broad in trying to act as this monster-version of himself - it's distracting but then he's never really worked and challenged himself like he's done here. Like playing a beloved legend in Walk The Line would have been a cake walk compared to this. and he really deserves credit for that. It's like when your favourite musician(s) bring out some shit that's too leftfield (probably acustic or folk...) for your taste and you have to write it off as artistic growth. Hmmph.
In the parlence of my blog's spiritual godfather, Nathan Rabin and his Year Of Flops- I'm Still Here is very much a Fiasco, as opposed to a Failure or Secret Success; it verges of the latter 2 but is very much a creative fiasco because it's full of good ideas and thesis but the Joaquin Phoenix character is so wrought with broad characteristics, it's exhausting to watch. His guy is like schulbby hybrid of Zack Gilifinakis and Jonah Hill- this obnoxious stoned beardo with no sense of self. He's horrible to the people around him, he spouts shit and takes no craft in making the rap music he professes to wants to make. Now to outsiders, that might seem perfectly reasonable for a successful actor to be expected to be like but he and director/co-writer Casey Affleck are so intent of reminding you every minute, it's exasperating!
The story of Phoenix giving up acting to rapidly is one we're all versed-in. We're watching this to find out what the behind the scenes story was and they think we're interested in what it would be like if Joaquin Phoenix was a dick. Well... i already saw the news and internet videos that you passively orchestrated so I know what that would be like. I think if you're still interested in this story after the YouTube clips end, you'd be much more interested in seeing how you captivate the world with a prank on such an epic scale. But no, Phoenix and Affleck want to make their comedy story which is parts Sacha Baron Cohen and Curb Your Enthusiasm but not quite as funny.
I'm generally conflicted about a lot of what I watch and am more then happy to overthink the likes of Sucker Punch and I'm certain that I'm Still Here is very original... it's just that it's not at all consistent or we'll made...

I watched I'm Still Here (2010), on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Gainsborough (2010)...

The Battle of the Sexes (1959)

Peter Sellers was one of the funniest men alive-fact.
But I think it's more important to remember, he was one of the greatest actors. Now we tend to remember great actors by how many Oscars they won or how well they could play the 'Dane'. But never did a man lose himself in a role like Sellers. He could do anything because he could be anyone... because the man Peter Sellers didn't seem to exist; he was always more comfortable playing someone else. He could be over the top and silly as Clouseau but the funniest acting I think he ever did was as the President in Dr Strangelove...during the 'phonecall to the Russian Premier' scene. Everytime I see that, i have to karaoke-along with him... 'Yes i'm sorry Dimitri... Yes-this is a friendly call... Of course, i like to talk to you Dimitri...'. My point is, he is basically playing it straight through that whole scene and you're on the floor laughing.
The guy was a legend and broke the mould and i can't think of modern equivalent-maybe at one stage, it could have been Jim Carrey but... hmmm.
Sellers is playing to these same strengths in this mostly forgotten British comedy from the late 50's, The Battle of the Sexes. He plays an office manager in Scottish tweed-makers whose life's work is being jepardised by some uppity woman (Constance Cummings) and her new fangled plans for efficiency and production, when she catches the eye of new company boss (Robert Morley), whose dad has just kicked the bucket leaving him the company.
Maybe what makes this film so remarkable, what has consigned it to the annals of time- is how sexist it is. We usually associate sexism with sexualisation but the sexism here is more that this one woman does not know her place; she's an overachieving, over-compensating know-it-all who's callous and ignorant. A harriden. A woman as irritating as 10 Ethel Murman's. You could argue that the filmmakers are well aware but there are only trace amounts of irony; this film was written and produced by woman after all but i don't know if people today could get over that. But if you can, there's a great classy comedy on fixing things that ain't broke and the last 20mins are a sublime farce. I mean you've got Sellers playing a retiring middle-aged conservative (all of which he was not...) but then you've got Robert Morley, one of Britain's greatest pompous cowards of comedy killing it as well; watching them together is a joy. But despite my earlier protestations, Cummings has great fun in this wonderful role where she gets to condescend, bag and shine at every turn.
This is a very fine comedy and i use that word explicitly.
I get the feeling, that there was a greater message in this film that got lost somewhere along the lines; the ending is roughshod and unlike the rest of the film leading up to it but it succeeds for me in reminding me of how amazing Sellers was and always will be...

I watched The Battle of the Sexes (1959) on BBC IPlayer.
My 2011 in Movies will return with I'm Not Here (2010)...

Dog Pound (2010)

I first heard about Dog Pound, when I saw the trailer during the first time I saw Black Dynamite (knew I'd shoehorn a reference to that eventually). Now as far as prison movies go, it would take a movie that went a really long way to beat A Prophet; I'd be surprised if i saw a better one in all my life but the fact, i bring it up and not the sense of 'It ain't no 'A Prophet...' should be taken as high praise indeedy.
Dog Pound is very accomplished. At very least, you come out at the end and feel like you've been through some shit -whether you liked it or not.
I doubt I call out many new auteurs as people we should all keep our eyes on but Kim Chapirion is. This guy is so confident and assured, that you can't help but take notice.
This film made want to rip my shirt open, get into a fight and spit blood in someone's face. And I would have but it was apple sausages night. You know I love the apple sausages.
Dog Pound takes place in youth offenders prison or whatever the equivalent is in Montana, USA and follows the paths of these 3 young men- Butch, Angel and Davis as they enter jail for various reasons-possession, GTA, GBH, etc.
Davis is a bit of a ladykiller and not much else, Angel is a lil bit tough but good natured. Then we come to Butch. Such a sorry soul is Butch, he's a young man whose never been able to trust an adult in his short life and will do anything to rebel against them in anyway he can.
Here, i may have made it sound like he's just flouncy and grumpy, pram-facing up the joint but he's actually brutally harming anyone who gets in his way. Including a horrible group of bullies, headed by the thuggish Banks.
What's even more amazing is that the cast of this movie made up mostly, of non-actors but they're brilliant, especially the guy playing Butch, who destined to make any girls crush on this 21st century Brando-stees and the guy playing Banks is a thoroughly hateful but loveable villain; it all works because in this setting, the naturalism really works and covers for the plotting that might jump-the-shark for some.
At it's center, I think what Dog Pound is really brilliant at selling is that feeling of someone getting in your face and quietly humiliating you, of someone intimidating you and before you know it, you've given up your self-respect and handed it over to them and they've made you resent yourself for being weak, more than them for taking it. It's sparsely written but it pretty much all resonates the way it was intended. It sucks you in early on and doesn't let go until the very end.
And if that all hasn't convinced you to watch this minor masterpiece, here's the short-sighted 3word Cody-style sales-pitch- it's like a French-Canadian 'Scum'...

I watched Dog Pound (2010), on Dvd via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with The Battle of the Sexes (1959)...

Carlos The Jackal (2010)

If you know anything about this biopic of Carlos The Jackal, then you know what I'm going to say so I'll just say it now and we'll move on...  It obviously too long. I didn't watch the 5hr version (presumably available on import from Masochists'r'Us) but this Highlights-cut, this 'Diet Carlos' cut is still 2hrs 40mins and change. It's long and though it's quite violent and otherwise stylised, it does get pretty arduous and the story get stuck in admittedly key moments without end in sight, a few times. Now I'll be democratic and say that since the film was devised to be both feature film and 5part French tv drama, that I'm certain items would be far more palettable broken up after every hour or so but if this is what was the best of that footage... i probably won't be back for seconds. Like the kidnapping of OPEC officials is a defining part of his guy's story but Carlos would have been remiss have seen filmmakers cultivate an hour out of it. Like I say, I'm sure this was good as an hour of the Carlos mini-series but it's too excessive for one sitting.
I found it strange to pick up on because i don't usually this about this aspect of  the post-production process but i noticed after an hour that this film doesn't have a soundtrack, no strings or orchestration that you might expect in the tenser scenes, to help build-ya'know-tension? But I just remembered that it does have a marginal soundtrack of new vave-y instrumentals at transitional stage of Mr The Jackal's life. Not that I dislike that sorta thing but it's kinda jarring in a film about an infamous Palestinian terrorist.
Apart from those MAJOR issues, it's quite good. Oliver Assayess has made sure it at least looks good and there's a estimated international jet-set feeling as the movie moves from London to Germany to Tripoli and Edgar Ramierez is very good in a part that requires him to change his physicality as well as grow and change on the manner of that biopics require.

I watched Carlos The Jackal (2010), on BluRay via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Dog Pound (2010)...

Death Race 2000 (1975)

I guess at this point we know I love exploitative films not because I enjoy sordid gratuosity (not a word-Ed.) but i enjoy the simple high-concept silliness of it all and sprinkles of sordidness, spice things up if anything. But i've never really sought out much Roger Corman fare. I've seen some of the stuff connected to the first films Scorsese's and others did for him but that wasn't to watch his stuff. Also I saw the terrible, blight on film, Death Race by Paul 'Aaaawwwful' Anderson and felt the original needed a fair crack of the whip, in my psyche.
At the same time, it's almost impossible for me to judge Death Race 2000 without everything that's gone since it came out, namely video games.  Without this movie, there would not be any driving games.  Well there might be but they certainly wouldn't look like they do and you wouldn't have had Carmageddon or Grand Theft Auto and if there was no GTA, well... then I don't want video games,  because that style, the satirical tone that the GTA's have was born in this movie.
As if you haven't already gathered, it about a race where the drivers get points for killings. There is a bit more to it...  but not so much more that it gets in the way of explosions or racing cars or killings. That might sound like I'm trying to be light but i'm sincere, I generally think it's a good idea to keep a plot small so you can do other stuff and you don't have to worry about exposition weighing down your thing.
David Carradine plays mysterious masked driver and national hero, Frankenstein singularly focused on the race- he's essentially a cyborg in a gimp-suitablity (think about it)  and Sylvester Stallone plays a wannabe gangster, who's the panto villain of the film. It's a real shame, Sly never went into or had the chance to play more bad guys- he's great. He's nasty enough to love, which a great villain should be. I literally can't think of any other films, he's played a baddie. Oh wait-Spy Kids 3D. Thanks brain, you made me think about bloody Spy Kids 3D.
Death Race 2000 was directed by Paul Bartel, who is equally famous for a film called Eating Raoul, which is about infidelity, class and cannibalism. My point is that Bartel, seemed to have a great sense how to communicate very base but provocative subjects yet make fun without being over-the-top. A little more realistic than is likely. I mean the tone of the film is never mean- more anarchic and mischievous; there is a bit where they mentioned points for running over children but that never comes to fruition and i can't help but love a film that celebrates killing old people. Stop sucking down MY air, Pops. It's my time, now.
So I'm not saying this is a great film but it made the way a lot great genre pics in its wake....

I watched Death Race 2000 (1975), via LoveFilm Online.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Carlos The Jackal (2010)...

Tomorrow When The War Began (2010)

Now I was kinda on the fence about seeing this because it looked a bit naff; it looked in the same sorta young-adult-lot vain as I Am Number Four and the pain of that, remains raw. But then Animal Kingdom was so amazing that Australia gets another shout aaaand it's Australian Red Dawn. Just call it that; people would want to see that. This title is whaaay too many words.
I should say i've never seen Red Dawn but 'John has US teenagers combat invading Commies'... i can guess how that'll play out.
I had a pervading thought all the way through Tomorrow When The War Began was this is totally the young adult novel, my girlfriend's housemate Sapphy would write. And no, not cos of the Antipodean setting; it's got a strong force of female characters and especially, the main character-Ellie.
As you might guess from the young-teen novel origin and the '12' cert, this is all very reminicent of the kinda thing that used to be on CBBC older kids drama before Neighbours, ironically- except this much bigger budget, lil too violent,  sweary and druggie for tea-time. But that's all there is- the way the kids act belies their ages of 18; they're closer to 14-15mins and there's a kids alone aspect, where there's only one adult that they come in contact with after the invasion of non-descript Asians. Written and directed by Stuart Beattie, a prolific Hollywood screenwriter-most famously, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and that Baz Lurhman-Australia movie, this surprisingly well directed but fairly poorly written. Like being set in the Aussie Outback, making that look picturesque is like shooting fish but he does really well with shooting action and building tension but any scene where there's characters sharing or intimacy, it just feels really false.
There was a moment in the trailer, where Ellie voices her concerns about the murdering, she has inadvertently done in the groups' guerrilla retaliations becuase no one seems to be able to give a straight answer about how the conflict started;where she says, 'i don't even know if these people are bad or if my actions were wrong...'- I was hoping the film would kind of fun with that idea; where you wake in the middle of a military conflict and have to save yourself but have no idea, who is 'good' and who is 'bad'? but it makes it quite clear how the sides are drawn. To be fair, all these actors in their late-20's do good as the group of teens (why do movies do that!??)-especially the woman playing Ellie, Caitlin Stasey.
Overall, this movie is alright but it's not exploitative enough to be a good genre pic and too violent for the tween crowd. You could never take your kids to see this- it would either be not appropriate for them or too boring for them...

I watched Tomorrow When The War Began (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Death Race 2000 (1971)...

Your Highness (2011)

The following piece will be even more gibbering and uneven than usual. Last week i was lucky enough to win tickets to see Your Highness but it was also going to be attended by its star and current comedy great Danny MacBride. I literally travelled hundreds of miles and 6hrs on a bus to go because i had to. The guy has not put a foot wrong in my book and even if the rest of a movie's crappy, he ain't. I think we were going to cock a snoot at MacBride, he does play the same sort of boisterous self-important cruel prick in all his roles but i like that guy. He's the epitome of shit-talking asshole, i wish i could get away with being. He hits a great cathartic sweet spot. But as excited as i was to see his take on a meta-swords and scorcery comedy, i had grave concerns. In fact, i can't remember when i last worried so much about a film's overall tone BEFORE i saw the film but i was concerned that they would really miss the groove of the current brat-comedy
(which i love) and the fantasy setting. I mean of course, a film with mythical creatures and swearing and pot smoking sounds like the ramblings of that stoned kid in school who made doodles in class and wore Anthrax t-shirts on wear-your-own-clothes days; i think even for someone who doesn't think about things like, it's a tough concept to hang your hat on... Is it spoof? will it make logical sense? It's neither fare nor foul.
I'm happy to report that MacBride and director David Gordon Green actually land it. The tact is basically we're going to play whatever crazy shit we've come up with as straight as possible. I really don't know who this film is aimed at apart from stoners (don't make a movie for stoners-one of them will watch it and the rest will just torrent the shit outta it...) but i think a good test to see of you'll find it funny would be whether the idea that James Franco could possibly be MacBride's older brother is funny to you. They mention it once and don't linger on it but that's kinda the level here. MacBride is great this, as is not-oft seen actor/currently hot screenwriter Jason Theraux as the baddie Lazar. And as much as i want to hate him for having the comedy acting life i always wanted- Rasmus Hardiker has paid many dues in tv comedies and really runs with the great opportunity he's been given.
He shows no fear in riffing with a team of seasoned improvisers. It's not wholly amazing or the funniest films I'll see this year but I was laughing consistently through out and it's quite ambitious to try to make something like this. I don't think it will be as popular as it should be; i'm certain the subject matter will put people off but i'm also sure it'll be a gradual hit on dvd.
And obviously, i was excited to drink in the presence of Danny MacBride (no homo) afterwards and he was great answering questions on Eastbound And Down and Pineapple Express and he brought Rasmus out with him, who seemed like a nice guy too. Prick.

I watched Your Highness (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Tomorrow When The War Began (2010)...

Lemmy (2010)

I'm no Motorhead fan but Lemmy was a must watch because i love the rock biography. I love the Slash autobio, with it's tales of that kook Axl Rose and knocking on death's door but going on to play a great show; the shit-talking about other rockers. Basically living vicariously thru these people. No, they don't detail the time they had a 24hr stop over in Deluthe but life isn't like that. We only remember the sweet victories and the crushing failures.
But what a life, Lemmy has lived. As one fan proclaims in this 2hrs of rockumentary joy, 'when the bomb drops, the only living things left will be cockroachs and Lemmy'. It's just a great insight into such an enigmatic man. There's not much of the making-amends for bad shit in the past- it's not the kinda deal. The tone is Lemmy is awesome-if they interviewed any one who didn't think so... They didn't make the cut. The only bit that's slightly like that is the bit where Lemmy is with his son and his son, who's in the band and is kinda meek and totally reverent to his old man, has to listen to his father shit-talk his mother and then hear his father tell the world that he was mainly into her for the casual sex... But that's the only moment like that- the rest is either talking heads interviews of people reminding us how awesome he is or it's showing us how awesome his life is, driving tanks, jamming with Dave Grohl, shooting the shit with Billy Bob
Thornton. I think the Billy Bob chat is my favorite bit cos Billy doesn't come across as the dick you or I might imagine.
I really want to share all the all the remembrances and stories from Lemmy but i'd be spoiling them... I will say that the guy from Megadeth reminicing about going to the Sunset Bar and Grill and watching the man playing one of those motorcycle coin-op's in coochy-cutters is as illuminating as that sounds. Only a joyless fool wouldn't want to hear about that. If in the unlikely event, i went to see Megadeth and the even more marginal situation, where i was introduced to this guy and he asks me what i thought of the show, i sternly tell him to never mind THAT shit- tell us about Lemmy's short shorts.
I guess what you learn about Lemmy is that he's a well-educated guy, who loves slot machines and World War memorabilia (either one). In every other parallel universe, if would be the guy propping up the bar, on the sick but in this one, he's the world's greatest bass player.
I'll admit 2hrs is too long for this sort of thing and it doesn't really continue the great momentum of the 1st 30mins but it's a great story of a well-lived life, comprehensively told. I'm not rushing out to buy any Motorhead records but i'd be happy to watch this all over again...

8 1/2 (1963)

I was talking to my baby sister and we were talking about movies and the film studies class she was taking. She was bemoaning her teacher- 'He's okay but he just likes action stuff like Taken. He doesn't really appriciate movies that i like, like Fellini's 8 1/2...'. I was thinking 1. Here i am claiming to be a cineasté and i haven't seen any Fellini. 2. She's my 16yo sister- she not allowed to know more about anything than me. And dutifully 8 1/2 was chucked on the ol' LoveFilm list,
What i'm going to say next might sound silly but after watching 81/2, i totally understand where that perfume advert style comes from. It was like an eureka moment, that you have when you find something that was the original inspiration for something, that you didn't actually realise was necessarily inspired by something in the first place; like hearing a Muddy Waters record- 'When was this made?...(?!)...Wow.'. I don't know if that all sounds stupid but it made me understand the origins of that style, by which i mean- clean shapes, stark lighting,perspective changing by moving the focus, sparse dense dialogue. I mean if anyone wants to get snooty and talk shit about style over content, just say '8 1/2, what was that?'. I mean i'm into it; it's an eternal classic because it's stylish and artistic and ambitious but i'd tender that it's got so much to say over it's 2hrs, it doesn't really get it together to say anything and i'm not saying it necessarily
has to but it's so concerned with being cool and fresh the story takes the backseat... Style over content.
I thought the idea of a man burdened the need to fulfil his creative potential or return to the level of past glories and the rag-tag circus of producers and actors that surround him charming. We can all relate to that feeling of wanting to make a masterpiece but not knowing where to start and if you've done it before, not remembering how you did it in the first place but i just feel like the dialogue is prohibitively dense and philosophical but may that will change over further viewings. I don't know were i got the idea that 8 1/2 was one of Fellini's first movies. If anything this is an artist hitting the sweet spot of their creativity. I mean, he's just so assured in his choices and it's just proven to be so influential, bleeding into other motion arts like tv and music videos but fashion too. The director played by Marcello Mastroianni dresses just like Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld do today, which is not to say he orginated the style but just perpetuated that 'always classic' formal style that Gucci and YSL do...
In a first for a post on the blog, i couldn't just choose 1 picture or poster for the post; i had to choose 3 images to credit how enigmatic the imagery is...

The Roommate (2010)

Yeah i know. This film has all the hallmarks of the sort of tut, we all try to avoid- it's a silly cheesy remake remade by no-name, probable hacks for tweenagers, who'll pay to see the guy from Twilight and/or the girl from Gossip Girl in a movie. On the right, i promised I wouldn't watch anything I had no interest in because It's not fair for me to make films i won't like into punching bags and that would get repetitive, so here's why I went to see this. The Roommate is made by Screen Gems.
Screen Gems is the b-movie production wing of Sony Pictures and I'd guess their remit is to make PG-13 genre movies. By this I mean stuff like Easy A, Takers, Prom Night, the Resident Evil movies, that Beyonce-Fatal Attraction movie. I won't say all the above are worthy of your time but the first two were VERY good especially, Takers, a wonderful crime thriller, which never saw the acclaim I thought it deserved. I think it's better than Heat.
Back to The Roommate- if anything was demanding a remake with younger womens, It was Single White Female. Okay not the best idea but there's a lot worse out there. I was totally expecting a silly teen thriller, 90mins of bitchy fluffy but i'm ashamed to say that towards the end I was really engaged and thrilled by it. Let's just say this film has a lot going for it and guess what? There's a film where Billy Zane is an asset... *whispers* THIS ONE. Zane has finally found the role he was meant to play: himself. He's not actually playing himself but his character is pretty Zane-like. I seriously imagine him asking the director questions about the character, his accent, what he'd wear and the director would seem dismissive 'Billy, just use your own voice, wear what you're wearing now...'
'Humph', thinks Billy, 'it's your funeral, mate...' but no, we all suspect Billy Zane is a lavacious good-looking creep. Him playing one is no hard sell. The rest of the acting is alright. Leighton Meester doesn't over egg the crazy, which is a personal success for her. Minka Kelly plays the 'stalkee' and well, it's a thankless role when her colleague gets to be nuts and have all the fun. Cam Gigandet plays the boyfriend and in my day, he was called Luke Perry and was far less cocky. He's a pretty boy but he's no Brando. His line delivery is unintentionally funny like when tells him, she thought 'her Roommate was sensitive but didn't know she was capable of this... ', he responds with 'i know I just thought was a wierd freak. Not this. Not this...'
But really, the success of this film is the story. As I said, I was girlishly gripped towards the end and it is in places gleefully over the top- when Kelly picked up that stray cat, i knew it was deadmeat and a phone sex scene, seemingly explicitly made for lip and mouth fetishists. All highlights.
So this was a bit of a guilty pleasure but we're getting much classier tomorrow...

I watched The Roommate (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Fellini's 8 1/2 (1962)...

The Rainbow (1988)

How did I come about watching this very forgotten, strange but intrinsically British film called The Rainbow? I was looking for something to watch on BBC IPlayer, when i came across the following description:- 'Drama focusing on an adolescent who dreams of transcending her dreary reality and experiencing the gamut of human emotions and sensations'.  Now call me naive but I was hoping this would be a philosophical journey of the mind and finding a path in our modern world with brief to mild boobage. Well...  I was right about the boobage.
The Rainbow, based on the book by D.H Lawrence (Calm Down-I said mild boobage...) is the story of a young girl with burgeoning feminist ideals at the turn of the 20th century, when those weren't quite about yet, as directed by Ken Russell (Calm Down-I said mild boobage...). Either way, i watched it for my sins.
For me, it's insane to think of a time,  when women were treated like second-class citizens; where they were limited in what they could do and where they travel and generally, be judged on how they live their lives. This would be down to the fact women scare the crap out of me and I'd feel safer with a moltov cocktail as they're more predictable. Seriously, I generally generalise women to be smarter then men as people who are likely to be more methodical and wise. Men are generally more basic and transparent in their actions. I know I am. Maybe this is why I couldn't completely engage with this story, where this young woman has to fight for the basic respects women come to easily, in this day and age (as it should be); where she has to fight to have her opinion heard, be allowed into further education and be allowed to work. Along the way she gets into relationships with a sapphic gym teacher (Amanda Donohoe) and a soldier (Paul Mcgann).  Both inspire her to mature over time but both have their limitations in terms of allowing her to develop further- the teacher is still too deferential to men despite her calls that they're pigs incapable of love and the soldier wants her to be educated and equal to him, in as much as she stays at home and doesn't work.
For a film about partly about sexual awakenings, it's pretty asexual in that aspect of maybe it's just that Amanda Donohoe with over-straighteners bleach-blonde hair in a white nightdress reminds me of Raiden from Mortal Kombat. Either way it's pretty unexciting or sexy. 

The Shock Doctrine (2009)

Tonight on My 2011 in Movies- we get political with The Shock Doctrine, Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom's documentry detailing Naomi Klein's best-selling book on socio-economics. I'm in a weird position these days where I'm working in a very political workplace and, though I take a generally above average interest in politics, i'm constantly challenging my own views on all facets of government now. The crux of The Shock Doctrine is the that of the work of an economist theorist called Milton Freeman,  has been been used to stablise economies by distabling them more or purposely halting growth first. For example, the bright spark of selling off and privatising your national business assets like utilities. This was started to be used by despotic dictatorships before it went on to be used by Thatcher and Reagan and then in Iraq, after that second mild skirmish. Urgh its always comes back to Bush in these documentaries, doesn't it?
What did blame shit on before him? I'm not sticking up for him-realllllly bad dude (and i mean that word precisely)  for leader of the free world but the fact 10's of millions voted him in twice is an inditement on democracy not him. Here's my socio-economics thesis- the proliferation of documentaries becoming widespread and theatrical entities would be nothing without George W. Bush. Bowling For Columbine with probably the first documentry you saw in the cinema and if it wasn't that it was Farenheight 911. But I digress... So where this economic model was designed to hard-reboot economies, Klein's thesis is that it only restarts the rich capitalising on the newly-poor poor, what she subs disaster-
Now I found this all interesting and provocative and I don't mind a documentary being provocative. I know documentaries are less the truth but stylised educated opinions, facts with a narrative. My point is you should take from it, what you find sincere and helpful like you should a religious text- not think it's all untenable truth. But my issue with the film is that, it doesn't have much to say and as much as I read No Logo and felt it was moany and one-sided, i'm sure The Shock Doctrine (book) is far more broad in its scope than this film portrays- it all seems like she wrote this sort of basic first year one note thesis, where she found a book on Milton Freedman somewhere and based her whole discourse on this theorist no one's thought about for a while. Like I say I'm no fan of hers but I give her more credit than that-which is not to say Klein is not prominently featured but the film can't seem whether it want to keep her narrative, which can be distant in message or to do the 'clips and Powerpoint' thing. In hindsight, the Klein narrative would have been better because it would have been harder to follow but it would have been better than what Whitecross and Winterbottom have done which is the equivalent of cinematic quantitative easing....

I watched The Shock Doctrine (2010) on LoveFilm Online.
My 2011 in Movies will return with 14 Swords (2009)...

Mother (2009)

On the surface, Mother looks like the Korean equivalent of a Sunday-night BBC one-off legal drama. It's about a mother who will go to any length to look after her mentally disabled son, who has inadvertently caught a murder rap for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's the sort of thing that's kept Linda La Plante in Elnett over the last 30years.
But as much as you've seen this sort of thing way too many times to care anymore, Mother pulls off the impossible by bringing something new to this sort of story. Not that I can put my finger on it... maybe it's just weird that they're doing it in Korea... i don't know. Maybe it's that the director Bong Joon-ho's last picture was a monster-movie called The Host and hasn't got all Alan J. Pakula and bored with the genre. I'll say now that I think it's too long at 2hrs but I generally think that... honestly I was most impressed by how vibrant this film about an elderly woman and her disabled son was. This is no guff- it starts off like that Chris Cunningham Gucci perfume advert for perfume and continues to be visually interesting with all sorts of tricks. More importantly, it's incredibly well written with bona fire twists and turns, although that might be down to a lost-in-translation jawn but it's working either way.  The world that Joon-you and his co-writer is fairly bleak and perhaps corrupt but the characters shown themselves to be less evil, more lazy and prone to broad conclusions, like the cops are crap and lack dedication at their job but no more crap than I was at working the call-centre circuit.
The 21st leads, Hye-ja Kim as the mother and Bin Won, as her son are really well drawn characters. I'm sure no one would be surprised by the lengths this woman goes to prove her sons innocence or how protective she is of him as you'd intuitively expect that of your mother but the success of the actress is that, it's not over the top and she is moderately irritating, the way she coddles this grown young man but you can tell, she always trying to do her best for him. Won has an equally difficult role to pitch as he has to play a young man with all the trappings of what young men aspire to while playing him with learning difficulties and aquits himself pretty well too. You don't pity the kid and you soon forget about his physical difficulties though the actor never does.
Mother is a great tonic to the sort of crime procedurals we must all be bored with by now- it's lucid, curious and challenging. Not a Mother's Day gift though...

I watched Mother (2009) on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with The Shock Doctrine (2009)...

Killing Bono (2011)

I know I was on the fence about seeing Killing Bono and i could have simply waited for the DVD but I wanted to support Robert Sheehan. To my brethren of Misfits fans, we know that he's one of the most amazing smart-alecky characters on television, in an age where ever fictional programme has a smart-Alec character. I love this guy and i like the idea that he could go all the way. Sometimes seeing tv actors in the cinema is disturbingly jarring like watching them being fed into the meatgrinder in a big studio horror movie. But then sometimes, it's the hearty sight of a young hope playing on a bigger canvas.
Killing Bono is the generally true story of 2brothers who are wannabe rock stars except they went to school with U2. The running thread through this film is open for light interpretation but I read it as 'don't try to surpass your old schoolmates, you'll fail'. Now obviously this is a pretty interesting idea, this one of never being able to keep up with your peers and that as you see a little success, the other guy becomes 200% more successful and somehow they tone of the film never descends into melancholy (god knows i've descended into melancholy for less).
It's not great though becuase even it has a great premise it doesn't really do much with it. They go to London to get a record-deal and the film stalls on that bit after the 1st act. No this maybe the truth and all that...  but given the choice of printing the truth and the legend?... Print the legend and ALL THAT.
Like I said, I love Robert Sheehan but he's not playing to his strengths, which is not to say I think he one note but he needs to play less apathetic characters. He just seems bored, which ironically doesn't come across as apathy. I guess Ben Barnes is getting to play comedy for the first time and he's fine but it makes me wish he could have swoped with Sheehan, it would have worked so much better. But these aren't the real issues - the main problem is that this is a by-the-numbers commercial British programmer. Directed by the guy that directed The Hole and screenwritten by Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, the word here is sterdy. It has a no fuss visual style, outside of a little discolouration to imply the past and frankly Clement and Le Frenais have been off the boil for years. Now that's not to detracts from the work they did on tv like Auf Vedersehn Pet, Porridge and The Likely Lads and I'd say they were some of the best sitcom writers this country has ever produced, in the same breath as Galton and Simpson but their film work has been crappy. The only actually funny bits come from Peter Serafiniwicz and I'm guessing much of that was ad-libbed. It's also sad that this was Pete Postlethwaite's last film, he already looks pretty unwell here but he won't be the last great actor to finish this career in some silly tut. Orson Wells last film was Transformers: The Movie...

I watched Killing Bono (2011)  at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Mother (2010)...

Source Code (2011)

Gawd, maybe I should change the name of this blog to 'My Year with Cyber-Techno-Fantasy Thriller dealies' - we've had The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Sucker Punch, that post where I mainly talked about Inception when i should have been talking about something else... A lot of big broad sci-fi. Filmmakers seem to be quite interested in these high concept film about now and that's fine with me. Pure sci-fi bores me. This Bradbury/Matheson/Dick-style stuff really captures my imagination. Source Code is no different. It's about a soldier who goes back to a parallel version of the past (not the actual 'real' one) for 8mins to find out who the terrorist is and he has to repeat it until he comes up with the answer. So far so Philip K. Dick. It's like Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day meets Hitchcock. Do professional critics make money from the one line reviews on movie posters?.. cos I can do them all day long.
I do imagine that if Hitch had made more technological thrillers, they would look like this. It's got a charismatic leading man, a charming leading lady, bombs, um... a train-He would have loved this.
Now I like Source Code and everything and... It works as a time-travel thingy but there's a niggles for me in the film and as much as these types of films are prone to having them, sometimes you can ignore them and sometimes you can't. Some people struggle with Inception because they don't understand how the technology works. My deal with Source Code is that the soldier,  played by Jake Gyllenhall, isn't pragmatic enough in finding the terrorist. For me, that is. If he was that efficient, then the movie's be 30mins long and would be short on characters and story. Stuff like that. But as i always say, I'm not in control of how I perceive things. Don't judge my irrational perceptions.
That my negative bit over. This movie is so finely edited it seems effortless. It never takes a break, never slows down but it never gets too convoluted either. Gyllenhall is good and I'm preparing to forgive him for Love And Other Drugs; as is Michelle Monoghan, Vera Carnival and the Teflon don of acting, Jeffrey Wright (he's unsullied by whatever tut he's been in). He's like the black Alec Guinness. He can do anything from play Colin Lowell to Jean-Michelle Basquiat to Muddy Waters. Sadly he doesn't have much to do here but I'm always happy to see him.
I think the best thing about this film for me is it has the strong emotional core that Duncan Jones previous and debut movie, Moon, lacked. Yeah, Moon is good and original and worthwhile but it was too remote for me to connect with. If you argued that was the point, I'd throw my hands up and say 'Fair enough' but I didn't feel that about this film and that represents progress to me. I also like that the terrorist is revealed at the end of the 2nd act instead of the end because it gives the film more time to play with the device and the quantum mechanics at play. Admittedly, the super happy ending is a smudge wide of the mark (what would Phillip K. Dick say?) but Source Code is very well made and it's hustle is too hard to knock.

I watched Source Code (2011)  at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Killing Bono (2011)...

Hatchet II (2010)

via here

I don't know how clear I've made it that I don't like horror movies. 

In the past, I've generally only go to see one per year at the cinema and waited for any other suitably hyper ones on DVD. This predominantly is because I'm a massive control freak. I have no problem with losing control when i generally know what to expect but with horror, the whole deal is being frightened and I suppose I don't get why I'd want to be frightened.
But my fear on this occasion was overruled by my facination of censorship. One of the most interesting things I read on the Internet last year was an interview with Adam Green, on the distribution and censorship issues he came up against with his movie, Hatchet II. It was given the prohibitive NC-17 by the MPAA and couldn't have that decision overturned. NC-17 basically signifies something is pornographic - that your work has no artistic merit; it means cinema chains will not exhibit your film and WalMart won't stock it. Hatchet II doesn't have much sexual content, so that means they felt that it was violently pornographic, which MPAA do not do... ever. They are famously leinient on violence compared to their purience on sex.
Green couldn't see why they had given this rating- he had made a movie for adults which was certainly not for under 18's but he couldn't see why what he had done was any different to a million other horror movies and decided to take a stand and endeavour to release it with the NC-17 rating and luckly got one cinema chain to release it with them.
So when I saw that Hatchet II, was playing on a limited late night slot at my cinema - my curiosity took over and i decided to check it out. I've not seen the first Hatchet movie but that mattered not; i could tell immediately that it was starting directly after the last frames of the original film and it was very tense and scary as our heroine has gotten away from her aggressor and is talking to some wierd guy in a shack and you KNOW that this guy is going to be meat and every second we prolong this is just winding me up inside! But inbetween this, we see this short broad satire on the Girls Gone Wild videos which is pretty funny. Then comes the time for the murder of this crotchety geezer.... and it's one of the most gleefully over the top, stupid murders i've ever seen. This heralded, the moment when i understood what the tone of this film was going to be. Hatchet II is an excessively violent film but no more violent than a Looney Tunes cartoon if gorier but that gore is so schlocky, its dumb. There are moments when they cut away from the murder in progress and someone somewhere just throws a paint-can of blood on a wall or tree. It's less a scary movie with funny tension-defusing moments but a broad funny comedy with brutal decapitations. Supporters of the film say it's not excessively violent and that it's in context - I'll say it is excessive but that it's also contextual. The film is a funny cartoon, not a thriller trying to bother or upset anyone. I'm pleased to live in a country that passed the film with the yeoman-like lack of fuss and hyperbole that this film deserves. That's no diss to Adam Green, he's far more perceptive about violence than the MPAA give him credit for. If violence is pornographic, it would mean it anatomically realistic like a snuff-tape. Green's murders are so unrealistic, it becomes ludicrous and silly and the censors of one of the world's greatest democracies should know the difference...


I watched Hatchet II (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Source Code (2011)...

Sucker Punch (2011)

Sucker Punch- Where to start? This is a prime example of why I endeavour to write this blog; the film is being generally disliked across the board but I want to stick up for it. It's not brilliant but it's got so much energy and chutzpah it becomes totally endearing.
Which is not to say that it's not totally confounding. This is the film that directors get to make only after significant success, having made 'one for them', Sucker Punch would be Zack Snyder making 'one for me'. But then again that doesn't completely fit-Snyder has pretty much been making ambitious movies since his take on Dawn of the Dead. 300 cemented his place as a visual pragmatist and made Warner Bros, a Mack truck full of money and it would appear they will foster him in whatever he chooses. So much so they let him make his version of Watchmen, which incidentally could only be indited for being too faithful to the source material. I'm sure that it recovered costs, but itwasn't as successful as it should have been, in execution or with audiences. But even before Sucker Punch was released, Warners have given him the jewel of their IP's- Superman...
I've been facinated with the film since I saw the trailer. Has the ever been such a dynamic trailer?  One that says 'this film has nubile young womens doing Eastern swordplay, WW1 trench warfare, killing cyborgs and dragon mythology set to Led Zep... in an insane asylum... Hi.' It was so over the top and boisterous, it left you wondering 'How's this ever gonna work in cohesive story!!?' Well that's the rub- Sucker Punch has no interest or intension of making a story any further than what it needs to fit its metaphorical philosophies on femininity, feminism and the id. Weighty subjects one and all and i don't celebrate it for succeeding with any of them cos I doesn't BUT I do support it for trying. This is a mash-up filmmaking, where subtext mixes with visceral action; where feminist messages are set in dank locales with never enough clothing. You can't judge it on its acting or writing, it's about physicality and ideas. Snyder takes from so many things, throws them seemingly carelessly into the pot that what you get it so unrecognisable, it might be original. As you can tell there's so many conflicting things going on, it's dizzying and like Watchmen, it's not executed quite as well as it could have been but it's an improvement; I think it's probably his best film becuase he's getting better with tone,  something his films have always suffered with. There are lots of moments where the film could have turned nasty or exploitative but it does a snap-change into one of its crazy fantasy sequences and that levels it out. This is the first time Snyder hasn't adapted from other materials and he shows us that with even more original creative input, he's got even more curious ideas about how to make a film and what you can do. It's not going to be many people's taste because it's too metaphorical to have a cognisant narrative but too excessive to be subtle. It also has a terrible bedroom electro version of Where is my Mind? by The Pixies, which is a lynching crime in most places but I feel like it was made with such good intensions I think it's excusable...

I watched Sucker Punch (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Hatchet II (2010)...

Belle De Jour (1969)

Catherine Denuve in a story of sexual self discovery and coming of age was always going to be a good watch and finally seeing a Luis Brunuel film doesn't hurt either.
I knew very little about the film before hand except that it was much lauded.

I watched Belle De Jour (1969) on Blu-ray via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Sucker Punch (2011)...