Goodbye Lenin

Better late than never... I really liked this. The nostalgia for east Berlin is kind of odd but it's mostly a kind of nostalgia for a kind of consumer innocence and a simpler life rather than any kind of political thing. Anyway, it was too long ago for me to remember much more than that vague impression.As I say I really enjoyed it.

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Knocked Up

Not as good as some reviews have suggested, but far better than the title suggest. A superior romcom that perfectly walks the line between the rom and com.

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The Bourne Ultimatum

Paul Greengrass and his shaky camerawork return for the final (yeah right) installment of the Bourne series. Better than the second film, maybe equally as good as the first. More wintery Northern European settings, more fighing, more running etc.

There's a cool bit set in Waterloo station which involves Paddy Constantine.

The Bourne films are easily the best action franchise of the last 5-10 years.

One of the things I really like about the Bourne films is how spare they are, you never see Jason on a plane or really any other type of transport unless he's running away or doing some other action stuff. It's like early William Gibson books, jumping from one scene to the next London, Madrid, Tangiers, the connective tissue stripped right back.

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Abigail's Party

It's good but it's very much a play rather than a film.

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13 Tzameti

It's very slick and sharply focussed and the tension/ suspense is ratcheted up effectively. It's strange to see the characters who all look like they're straight out of a Godard film getting into modern cars and using mobile phones and stuff. Unlike Good Night and Good Luck where the monochrome situates the viewer firmly in the time period and imparts a sense of crystal clear realism, here it serves to distance you from the events and adds a feeling of dislocation, which heightens your association with the out of his depth immigrant protagonist.

Stylistically speaking, the closest point of comparison is probably John Wagners Button Man comic book. A spartan plot, loose class politics allegory and a kind of retro-contemporary setting. That said, Tzameti bizzarely seems to fit more into the sports film template than anything else. True there's no training montage, but the structure of the competition that is the films center piece is pure Rocky.

Also worth noting that if you know nothing about this film when you start watching it you'll probably enjoy it a hell of a lot more than if you've seen the trailer/ box cover both of which are a bit spoilerific.

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Sicko

I find Michael Moore pretty irritating. Whilst I agree that American gun laws are insane and the Bush administration is corrupt and incompetent Moore's documentaries have always seemed to me resort to misrepresentation and exaggeration to make their point. There are bits in Fahrenheit 9/11 where he shows footage of members of the Bush administration shaking hands with people in Arab dress and it's clear that the images are out of context and that the intent is to play to base xenophobic instincts in the audience. The use of emotive music is another problem for me. But I guess I'm just old fashioned expecting documentary film making to aspire to the same standard of impartiality as the news media is (quite rightly) expected to. Moore is a skilled film maker and polemicist, his documentaries have a cinematic quality which his followers, even the excellent Smartest Guys in the Room, have failed to match.

Sicko displays many of its predecessors problems; the smug voice over, the irritating sarcasm, over emotional music and de-contextualised footage are all present. Thing is, whereas with Farenheit 9/11 you get the impression that he's taking a complex set of issues and reducing them to a cartoon, in Sicko the issue at stake is cartoonishly simple: How can the richest country in the world have no social security system? And: Can such a rich country that fails to provide even basic medical provision for all its citizens be considered civilized?

Much of the film is taken up with touring the health care systems of other nations, Canada, the UK, France and Cuba. This was where I was expecting the film to fall apart, but to be honest the portrait of the NHS may be somewhat cursory and rose tinted but I certainly wouldn't describe it as inaccurate. Moore cherry picks the best bits from each country's systems to make his point: "Socialised" medicine is one of the most important achievements of the 20th century. In this case his methods seem to me to be justified. Whilst the NHS isn't perfect, you know that the country would take to the streets if any government tried to dismantle it. And frankly the American people should take to the streets and demand that their government provide them all with health care too. If enough of them see this film then I really think that they might.



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Good Night, and Good Luck

An unusual film. In fact, it feels more like a very well made BBC4 tele-play. There's a sharp economy to the way George Clooney tells the story of CBS journalist Ed Murrow's very public confrontation with Senator Joe McCarthy. It seems like a very real portrayal of the period, everyone smokes all the time and there arene't many people who arent't middle aged white men in the TV industry. The effect of the use of black and white is interesting to consider, does it help to situate the film in it's period or does it act to distance the viewer making what is an incredibly relevant film seem less so? Either way it looks really great.

If you're interested in journalistic ethics or the McCarthy witch-hunts then you're in for a treat, otherwise I suspect the film could come accross as quite cold and functional, it tells the story and then it's over. It's kind of like the anti Lord Of The Rings, which in case you're wondering is a good thing in a film that's based on real events.


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Tell No One

A man's wife is murdered. 8 years later she sends him an email.
That's the hook of Tell No One. It's a pretty effective hook and the process of uncovering the chain of events leading up to this improbable event is an enjoyable ride. That said I couldn't help but feel it's one of those films that operates by making you feel clever for watching it whilst actually being in the business of complicatring what could be quite a straight forward story. The way the convoluted plot revelations are structured seems to be entirely in service of the exhilarating central chase sequence, which is no bad thing because it's a great sequence but it all leads to a bit of a Scooby Doo ending i.e. the guy/girl behind it all reveals everything in the last scene and we find out there was really no way we could have known. Worth a watch even if you end up feeling a bit cheated.

Notes: Continues the proud French cinematic tradition of ordinary chainsmoking late middle aged frenchmen having supermodel wives, see 36 Quai des Orfèvres for a particularly stunning example of this tradition.

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Warrior King

Tony Jaa lacks the charisma for the small town boy role. Someone needs to give him a something like Fist of Fury that doesn't require a nice guy. But generally the plot is adequate scaffolding for some strong fight scenes. One in particular, choreographed in a single 10 minute tracking shot, is one of the finest pieces of cinema I've ever seen. For this section alone you should watch this film.

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The Prestige

Nice twisty how dunnit. The audience is deliberately kept confused about the order of events as a kind of patter to distract from the directors main trick. Whilst this kind of behaviour would normally irritate the hell out of me it seems totally apt for a film about the process of magic tricks. The final revelation re. Hugh Jackman's methodology is perhaps one twist too many though.

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Best In Show

Yes, the humour is gentle and yes the plot meanders but this is still top notch observational character comedy, anyone who's seen the taxisdermy documentary Stuff The World will be struck by the similarity in the depictions of strange obsessive worlds.

In my book it's the equal of Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind.

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Brick

A nearly successful experiment in genre isomorphism: The tropes of a noirish detective thiller are transposed onto the social structures of a US highschool movie.

The results are good, though appreciation depends to some extent on your understanding of the conventions of the genres.

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O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Really enjoyable. Not the Cohen Brothers at their best (that would be Fargo or Millers crossing for me) but a nice addition to their CV along the quirky lines of The Hudsucker Proxy but with a more serious edge.

Watching it on a TV it didn't hang together quite as well as I remembered from the cinema but only in a small way. The music, produced by the great T Bone Burnett is brilliant and I've been humming it all week.

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Election

It's easy to mistake this for a teen high school film but really it's more of a mid-life crisis film as a respected high school teacher Mr Mcallister (Matthew Broderick) painfully and hilariously sets about destroying his life, ably assisted by impossibly ambitious student Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon).

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The Lives Of Others

A solitary Stasi officer monitors, through wire taps and hidden microphones a potentially subversive playwright at the behest of his superior who is having an affair with the playwrights girlfriend.

The only character who knows everything that goes on is the observing officer, who comes to sympathise with his subjects, and he has very little direct communication with the other characters lending most of the film a detached air which makes the final act all the more dramatic.

A compelling story and technically adept film making, but I don't think it deserved to win the best foreign film Oscar at the expense of Pan's Labyrinth.

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Dirty Ho

Produced towards the end of the golden age of 70's kung-fu films Dirty Ho, along with 5 Deadly Venoms and Last Hurah For Chivalry, represents the apogee of the Shaw Brothers tradition. Whilst it can't match Last Hurrah's visual style (surely an inspiration for Yimou Zhangs recent epics) or the taught plotting of 5 Deadly Venom, it does offer some of the tightest and most imaginatively choreographed fight scenes this side of Jackie Chan's hey day, all of which take place on sumptuously dressed sets (seeing it on the big screen was great). One thing that really impressed me that's often overlooked is the sound design for the film, the impact noises and incidental synth drones are brilliant giving the final fight in particular a really musical feel, a great sense of rhythm and crescendo.

The plot is nonsense and finishes abruptly after the last fight scene (though it's not as apparently arbitrary as some Shaw Brothers films), not helped by the fact that the print I saw had subtitles which could most charitably be described as functional, but really that's not what these films are for.

[the two guys with moustaches, are having a fight but trying not to let the guy in white know what's going on]

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The Edukators

An interesting film about a group of friends who protest about the evils of society by breaking into peoples houses and rearranging the furniture. As is often the case with these things though things quickly get out of control and relationships and idealism are tested.

Excellent performances (esp. Julia Jensch who played Eva Braun in Downfall and replaces Franke Potente as Smash Hit's most fanciable German) and a strong script are only vaguely undermined by a bit of a messy finish.

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Tape

Based on a play and it shows. Thankfully it's an interesting play, exploring subtleties of memory and friendships. The directors (occasionally over active) editing and natural performances from the three cast members elevate the whole thing significantly above the level of one of those televised BBC2 plays they used to show in the 80s. I was quite pleased it never really got as dark as it could have done.

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Bridget Jones's Diary

Easily the best Richard Curtis romantic comedy. Jane Austen's plot does the heavy lifting and watching the film reminded me that Curtis did Black Adder which is really easy to forget during the thoroughly mirthless Notting Hill.

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Hot Fuzz

Hot shot London cop Simon Pegg is stationed to a sleepy west country village where no crime ever happens and partnered with a moon faced simpleton (Nick Frost). But wait! Perhaps all is not as it seems, and maybe, just maybe the aforementioned moon faced simpleton can teach the city hot shot a thing or two after all...

Of course it's not and of course he can and of course this all leads to a gunfight of heroic proportions that had me humming the Bad Boys II theme tune all the way home.

Sean of the Dead, the team behind Hot Fuzz's previous film, was great, genuinely a horror film and at the same time genuinely a comedy, a difficult balance to get right. While Hot Fuzz doesn't quite get it's own peculiar balancing act spot on, mixing US macho cop drama (Point Break, Bad Boys 2, Die Hard etc) and British small town gothic (Wicker Man and Straw Dogs) is a stroke of genius. The direction and the acting are spot on and there's a genuine affection for and understanding of the films which are parodied, a million miles away from the crass and cynical junk like the Scary Movie series. If I had a problem with the film it's that just about every character will be recognizable to anyone who's watched any British TV over the last 5 years or so, but that's a small thing. If you like guns and/or laughing you should see this film.

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