Shuggy Reviews

The Wizard of Mars (1965)

So bad it's ... bad

[1/10 · 29 December 2023]

Thank me, I watched this right through so you don't have to. It's so far past "so bad it's good" it's out the other side and bad again. They worked quite hard to make this as bad as it is.

There's something about every aspect of it - storyline, dialogue, casting, sets, pacing - that is almost sadistically bad. Here are four astronauts, "scientists", who know nothing of science and care less. Racing against time to reach the base before their oxygen gives out, they wander about, keeping no track of time. Finding an oxygen cylinder, they let it hiss away for a full minute, talking casually before they close it. Running out a collapsing city, they obviously round the same corner several times.

Most of the dialogue is of surpassing vagueness and banality. For example, walking past scrubby plants on the bank of a Martian canal.

Steve: "What d'ya think, Doc? Should we keep t'the bank?"

Doc: "Well, even though we haven't seen any signs of life, I think we should stay away from the shore, at least during the night."

Dot: "Doc, how far is it to where the main stage came down?"

Doc: "The canal should carry us to the hills. Then we'll have to make our way on foot to the desert area. It should be near there." ...

In the desert at night:

Dot: "Beautiful, isn't it?"

Steve: "In its own alien way, I guess it is."

Dot: "And so still and quiet"

Steve: "There's a breeze starting up. Feel it?"

Dot: "Mm-hm. It makes the sands look so dreamlike."

Steve: "It's another world, all right."

They come across identical rectangular plates or blocks, a "Yellow Brick Road" in the desert.

Steve: "Hey! I think I've found something!"

Charlie: "What is it, Steve? Whaddidja find?"

Steve: "I"m not sure what it is. The storm must have uncovered it during the night."

Doc: "And there's a lot more of it still covered by the sand."

Dot: "I wonder what it could be."

Doc: "Let's clear away some more. You sure can't tell now."

Steve (thoughtfully): "These stones... they form a definite pattern."

Doc: "You're right."

Steve: "They're too symmetric to have been formed by Nature."

Dot: "If not by Nature, how?"

Doc: "Some form of intelligence was at work here."

Charlie: "You mean somebody built this?"

Steve: "I'm positive!"

Charlie: "But who?"

Steve: "You mean there's life on this planet?"

Doc: "Who can say?" ...

(Apparently the Burgess-Shale-like animals that attacked - or nuzzled - them at night in the canal, that Charlie then shot, don't count.)

The striking exception to this fuzziness is Carradine's 8-minute monologue as the titular Wizard. It was apparently written by someone else from the rest of the script. He embodies the whole Martian population, now trapped in a 20cm crystal ball (that Steve clumsily drops). He rambles on till he's out of time (which has stopped for them), failing to tell them what to do to make it start again - put the ball at the centre of a large pendulum escapement. Then, as in the WoO, it was all a dream, but L Frank Baum would be ashamed to have his name associated with this disaster.

Punch (I) (2022)

A little offbeat, a little predictible, quietly satisfying.

[8/10 · 9 August 2022]

I was expecting more strangeness from Welby Ings, whose short "Boy" (2004) was engagingly creepy. This is more conventional and grim, with homophobic violence and the poetic slow-mo gore of desperate boxing.

It's a little predictable. The town of Pirau (meaning "rotten") is hypocritically homophobic. The butchest characters turn out to be the queerest. Jim (engaging Jordan Oosterhof) is ill-at-ease from beginning to end with the role of boxer that his father (obviously wanting his son to be what he couldn't) pushes him into - shades of "Tea and Sympathy" (1956) - and the central issue of him finding his sexuality is familiar. What happens to Whetu (Conan Hayes), a young Maori femme on the way to spread his, um, wings in Sydney, comes as little surprise. There are some surprises and subtlety, though. In a single gesture and a few seconds of action, our view of Whetu's role changes 180 degrees - or perhaps that should be basement to penthouse.

As usual in Aotearoa, the scenery threatens to steal the show, in this case the dunes of, probably, southern Kaipara, generally filmed in a gloomy afternoon light. The sex is poetic and inexplicit, fitting well into the storyline.

A couple of things strain credulity, high tech video gear in a remote shack far from the grid, and a high school boxer being set up in a high-stakes bout when he's so far never been seen in a ring with an opponent. But the ending is feel-good, if not what you might expect.

Muru (2022)

A new classic Ao/NZ movie

[9/10 · 6 August 2022]

If you're in Aotearoa New Zealand, this can not fail to resonate, dealing as it does with events of living memory, the.police shooting of Steven Wallace in 2000, and the police raid on Ruaatoki in 2007, with echoes of the police raids on Maungapoohatu in 1916 and Parihaka in 1881. Unsurprisingly there is a police disclaimer at the beginning. There is no mention of the police apology for 2007 or reparations for 1881 and 1916 at the end.

But it is a fictionalisation, not a documentary reenactment. As such, it is compelling, and a classic noo-Aotearoa drama, up there with "Sleeping Dogs" and "Utu". Not so much "Once Were Warriors", it is largely in te reo Maaori (but with English subtitles) and firmly on the Maaori side. The Paakehaa (non-Maaori) case is not strongly made, and one in particular seems almost insane, but it is clear why they were suspicious. Their implausibly effective technology fails at dramatically convenient moments, so they miss the innocent explanations.

The story is told sequentially but jumping among several different locations. Cliff Curtis carries the drama as the community police officer torn among loyalties, police, community and family, while suspected of being a turncoat by both sides. Tame Iti as himself is more of a minor character, with occasional moments of Billy T James-esque comedy and one improbably dramatic moment.

An important element is the innocent bystanders (in fact all were innocent), the children and koroua (elders) caught up in the drama. It is they who tear your heartstrings at the end.

The film has uniquely sought and largely found the essence of Ngaai Tuuhoe, an iwi (tribe) that has done more than most to retain its language and traditions.

"Muru" traditionally means intra-familial ritual plunder as punishment for a misdeed. In modern usage it means forgiveness/absolution as in "Murua aa maatou hara" (forgive us our sins). It's not clear which it means here.

{I have used double vowels because this site wouldn't accept macrons. They are just lengthened, not broken up.)

Crimes of the Future (2022)

When surgery is the new sex, this will be porn

[5/10 · 5 August 2022]

I thought I would find myself a lone dissenting voice here among avid Cronenberg fans, but I find a liked it better than some reviewers - but still not much.

This is a very stylish film. Pity about the substance. The setting is perhaps the best thing about it, dark run-down parts of somewhere like Athens. The props are Giger-ish, a bony wobbly chair, a hanging bed with scrawny massaging(?) arms, A flotation tank for performance-surgery, a bed for autopsies that just happens to have dishes the same shape as the hitherto-unknown organs that go in them, and surgical remote controls the look like Giger was asked to redesign Simon Says.

The main characters are quasi-engaging, but distanced by their strange motivations now that pain and infectious disease are no more, and "surgery is the new sex". So there is surgery, a lot of surgery, pornographic surgery (they are awake throughout), but, without pain, they might as well be cutting the plastic that it really is.

There is a lot of talk about body modification as art and as the future but little or nothing to make us care.

It is the storyline I most take issue with. A capsised cruise ship in the opening scene remains unexplained. The one truly shocking moment is conventional (involving electric drills). What should have been the climactic revelation is tame, after we have been told to expect "outer space". The ending, that should have wrapped the whole story up and brought us some kind of closure, is lame.

Blithe Spirit (2020)

Disappointing

[2/10 · 14 December 2020]

Going by the synopsis of Coward's play, this is just its skeleton, not so much fleshed out as taxidermised. I had hoped for his brittle wit, but there was little of it, with punchlines that left me going "Huh?" Coward would not have used the same gag - person takes umbrage at imprecations directed at an invisible person in front of them - again and again, without the last time taking a better twist than a punch in the nose. Judi Dench does her best with Madame Arcarti, as not just a medium but also a witch, but her happy ending does not survive a moment's reflection on how it would be for the other party. The other characters are unlikable and the plot has improbabilities even within its own parameters: stage levitation would not have impressed a 1937 audience, nor its exposure have garnered a front page headline. The setting and sets are almost grimly art deco and the period is shoved in our faces like an apple pie. Who would like this? Maybe someone who's had one too many.

Come to Daddy (2019)

Incredibly Strange

[9/10 · 10 August 2019]

(The Wellington premiere with Ant Timpson and Emma Slade giving Q&A)

O.M.G. That was, as expected, an Incredibly Strange movie. (Ant Timpson is best known in New Zealand for the Incredibly Strange film festival, which began in 1994 with the likes of Plan Nine from Outer Space.)

Elijah Wood's character, Norval, is aptly named. He is an innocent nerd, called to visit his estranged-since-childhood father at a remote and beauiful house on the shore of Vancouver Island. The father (Stephen McHattie) is creepy from the get-go (think Jack Nicholson in The Shining). I'll say no more but nothing is as it seems and the movie is a roller coaster ride of extreme tension and release, extreme violence, and a generous slab of (black, of course) comedy. Just suspend your belief enough to erase the words "We've got to get you to hospital" from your memory.

I didn't stay for all the Q&A because they talked at length about technical details, but Timson based the movie on his own experience with the death of his father, which was Pretty Strange.

It'll never be a blockbuster, but it'll be a cult favourite for years to come.

Aniara (2018)

What happens when a poem is filmed.

[6/10 · 1 August 2019]

This is based on a much-loved poem in Swedish written in 1956 (when my school debating club seriously considered "That man will never reach the moon"). Bear that in mind and much makes sense - more sense than the poem ever did to me when I first tried to read it. Much that purports to be science is just poetry. The film-makers have made some attempt to update the plot and the setting, bearing in mind that we have all seen 2001: a Space Odyssey..

The science is still cheesy. The ship has lost all its fuel, but power is uninterrupted and water is abundant (there is not only an extended lesbian shower scene, but a 20m swimming pool!). The architecture of the ship is absurdly angular, but nothing ever springs a leak. The ship's interior has been compared to a shopping mall and a cruise ship, but manufactured goods never show any sign of running out, and the whole thing seems absurdly understaffed.

It's basically an exploration of how an isolated group of people copes when it is cut off from Earth, its memories and hope. The main characters are sufficiently well drawn to explore these themes in, for me, a satisfying way. On those terms, it does well and is worth watching, though you must fill the hints in the chapter headings with your own deductions.

Vivarium (2019)

A classic

[9/10 · 1 August 2019]

SF? Fantasy? A personable young househunting couple are abandoned by a creepy estate agent in one of a development of identically uninspiring empty houses. Though the sun shines and similar fluffy clouds dot the sky, it's strangely claustrophobic. Their basic needs are taken care of, but they are given an unexpected task that grows increasingly onerous. Their different reactions to this burden, and to each other's reactions, give the movie substance. The climax and resolution are splendid, but this is NOT a feel-good movie.

I think it's a classic (maybe not just a cult classic),. In his Q&A, writer/director Lorcan Finnegan referred to The Quiet Earth, Magritte, Escher and many more. Someone else has referred to The Truman Show, but to me the elephant in the room was Village of the Damned (based on, um, The Midwich Cuckoos). Yet its admixture of these themes keeps it from seeming derivative.

American Circumcision (2017)

Hard to fault

[9/10 · 22 September 2018]

I warmly recommend this movie, even for people who think the subject holds no interest, or for those whose minds are made up, one way or the other.

Its focus is firmly on the US custom that began in the late 19th century, peaked in the 1960s - so that the great majority of middle-aged US men have no foreskin (nor any knowledge of it except folklore, largely wrong) - and is declining much more slowly than it has in the rest of the English-speaking world.

I especially appreciate the way it made use of genital cutting advocates, by simply letting them say their piece and then presenting the facts that undermine their arguments. In this sense the film was "balanced" but the balance of the facts is firmly against the custom, as the rest of the developed world silently shows.

In the segment on Female Genital Cutting, the advocate Fuambai Sia Ahmadu could say how she thought it benefitted her, and spell out the similarities to Male Genital Cutting - contrary to popular opinion - herself. FGC was briefly sanctioned by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2010, in the form of a token ritual nick, "much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting" in the AAP's own words. Only an outcry by Intactivists and then feminists caused the policy to be "retired" within a month.

The editing between speakers was excellent, some seeming almost to complete each other's sentences. We could have seen a bit less of the Capitol building as wallpaper: a Federal age-restriction on male genital cutting, like that on all female cutting including the most exact equivalent, is not likely any time soon. One striking omission was any actual photograph of a normal adult penis, or the unique rolling action of the foreskin, much easier to show than to describe. It's not just a "flap". It is a shame that the film seems to have succumbed to the same reluctance to be explicit that has so helped the custom to become the US norm.

Particularly striking was the contribution of Shannondoah Dartsch, a mother who had only learnt the previous day that what had been bothering her about her son's operation was in fact a botch (buried penis). The lack of good data on the frequency of such negative outcomes was one focus.

The many people working on this multi-facetted issue, each speaking in their own specialties, were all very well captured in all their idiosyncracies. Marilyn Milos grew tearful describing how she can never apologise enough to her sons, but how her work against the custom offers some solace - cut to the rather strange Australian scientist Brian Morris, mocking her "emotionalism".

Male genital cutting advocate and former AAP Circumcision Task Force chair Edgar Schoen's heartlessness towards men who do complain spoke for itself. One of those was (was) the very personable Jonathon Conte who described how it contributed to his depression ... the film is dedicated to his memory.

Liquid Sky (1982)

An amateurish Rocky Horror without the wit or the songs

[4/10 · 3 August 2018]

I saw this when it came out and was intrigued, and wondered if it would become a cult movie. Seeing it again, I see clearly why it never did.

The premise, that aliens might be tiny and feast on our endorphins, whether from drugs or sex, was novel then. The (16-colour?) computer graphics to illustrate it were all we knew, and androgyny and sexual freedom were just beginning to be overshadowed by the AIDS epidemic.

In hindsight, the film is amateurish: the characters and dialogue are as stilted as porn (or so I'm told). The music sounds like it is played on a Commodore 64, with an emphasis on square waves that hurt the ears, and Marin Marias' "Sonnerie" has never been so boring. The plot line makes little sense. The aliens leave glass daggers in the heads of two of the characters they kill, and the daggers vanish. The next two corpses themselves vanish, one in front of many onlookers who soon seem to forget the event. While the five deaths are all presented as if from the aliens' viewpoint (and all very similarly), we gain little insight into them or their modus operandi. Most of the human characters are unlikable and one of the two who is (albeit tedious), comes to an unjust and unhappy end.

Rocky Horror (1975) did androgyny, camp, face-painting, sex, drugs & alien invasion vastly better, and with wit and songs. It's sad to think of what this might have been.

The Wound (2017)

Initiation, schnititation, real manhood lies elsewhere

[8/10 · 7 August 2017]

This film has caused controversy in South Africa because of the secrecy surrounding initiation, and it will be viewed by Xhosa very much as a hostile white man's view of the practice. There is little about the cutting (nothing is shown) but much about homophobia and bullying. It is clear that the filmmakers think (as I do) the idea that initiation makes boys into men is hollow.

It's a slow-burning drama with three central characters, Xolani ("X") a caregiver to a single initiate, Kwanda, among a group of about 10, three of whom are cared for by Vija. X has sex annually at the initiations with Vija, who is married (shades of Brokeback Mountain), but their relationship is ambiguous. Kwanda's sexuality is unclear, but coming from Johannesburg, he is more urbane than the others, and suspect for that reason. He is called a "faggot" but more as a general-purpose insult.

The initiates are all cut early on in the film; there is mention of painful herbs being applied, and infections, but not the significant risk of death. Near the end, Kwanda, who has said very little, dismisses the importance of the genital cutting (without actually denouncing it). The irony is that he _has_ matured from his experience on the mountain, but not in the way the traditionalists imagine. Another irony is that X seems to have learnt from his pupil.

What the film very much brings out is the urban-rural, traditional-modern tension in South Africa, though the setting is entirely traditional. I recommend it to urban people for a glimpse into a very different culture - that yet throws light on our own.

Experimenter (2015)

An elephant?

[7/10 · 1 August 2015]

For some reason I expected more of a documentary, so this docudrama nearly had me out the door, but the authoritative man in the grey lab coat persuaded me to stay.

It clearly, and to my understanding, accurately, lays out the format of the notorious Milgram Experiment, which is necessary for all that follows; the public and academic backlash, our involvement as we question whether we would behave like Milgram's subjects, and his own soul-searching. To be sure, he comes across as quite cold-hearted, and more self-doubt would have made a more interesting story. Instead, all of the doubt is carried by his colleagues and Wynona Ryder as his patient wife.

The original experiment is well-enough represented that the re-creation of a TV series about it (with Kellan Lutz as a young William Shatner playing the Milgram character) has some amusingly obvious elements of parody, and hence self-parody of this film.

The film has some unsettling features over and above the experiments themselves - scenes carried out in colour in front of poorly placed monochrome back-projections, and an elephant, yes, a real, if slightly out of focus elephant behind Peter Sarsgaard as he talks to the camera walking towards us along a university corridor. Why? If it's The Elephant In The Room, what are we not seeing?

As Milgram points out, he and his experiment are treated with opprobrium, but the results are accepted, and serve their purpose. While the Holocaust is repeatedly invoked (including footage of the Eichmann trial), and Milgram twice mentions that his name is Hebrew for pomegranate (in fact it's not but milgrom is the Yiddish), an obvious ethical parallel is not mentioned: the Nazi experiments of killing prisoners with X-rays, which are still shown (usually on an opt-in basis) to medical students.

Love Is Strange (2014)

Belies its title

[4/10 · 16 January 2015]

"Love is Strange" seems intended as a slice-of-life, but it's more frustrating than intriguing, inspiring or uplifting.

While there's nothing to complain of about the mise en scène or the acting, it doesn't add up to anything. Most of the main events happen offstage, so it neither shows nor tells, just implies.

Many loose ends are never tied up. What happens to Vlad? What happens to Elliot and Kate's marriage? The pace is slow enough that the alternative movies running in your head are more interesting that what's on screen. There's sexual tension between George and Ian: what if they had a fling? How would Ben react? What if Joey WAS gay? What if Ben tried to help him come to terms with that but was misunderstood, with catastrophic consequences? What if Vlad was and Joey was just going along with him? Or if they really were doing drugs - and Ben found evidence?

What happens about the letter George is composing or rehearsing while Dovie Currin is playing the "Raindrops" prelude (and much better than he gives her credit for)? Does he send it to the parents of his former pupils? Do they petition the school, or demonstrate? We never know.

But my biggest disappointment was that the film completely belied its title: None of the love in the film is strange in any way. Love often IS strange, and some very good movies have illustrated that.

I'd call this a broken movie. I suggest you watch until they say goodbye outside the Waverley Diner and Ben goes down to the subway. What follows adds nothing.

The Case Against 8 (2014)

A fascinating look at the quirks of US law and politics

[8/10 · 8 June 2014]

As a non-American, I found this a compelling look at one of the quirkier aspects of US law and politics - how states may hold local referenda (at least California seems to do it a lot) that may then be challenged in the Supreme Court.

An intriguing aspect was the employment in support of the case of Ted Olsen, the Republican lawyer who got George W Bush elected by making Florida stop its decisive recount. The LGBT community was initially suspicious of him, but he won them over by his principled stand.

Reviewers who want to re-litigate the case itself seem to have missed the point. The populace and local legislatures may not pass local laws that violate the US Constitution. Proposition 8 was ruled to breach the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing equality to all citizens. Its supporters did not have standing to appeal against the Supreme Court's ruling, because their rights were not harmed by striking down Prop 8.

This was not intended to be "balanced", as its title implies. As a real documentary it followed real people through an unpredictable course of events. It might have all ended in tears. It would have then been useful as a fundraiser to continue the fight.

I'm a Porn Star (2013)

A boring in-house promo, with a touch of doco

[2/10 · 8 June 2014]

An exposé of the gay porn industry this is not. Keywords n o t needed include: Mafia, organised crime, drugs, Viagra, exploitation, huge endowment, fluffer.

It begins with a short history of gay porn, done entirely in voice-over, with many familiar images from Bob Mizer's Athletics Models Guild, Tom of Finland, etc. all better covered in earlier documentaries, such as Beefcake (1998). The growing role of the Internet is touched on. Then follow a series of soft interviews with some quite ordinary people, illustrated with cutting-room-floor clippings, and a great deal of underwear product-placement. Two of the subjects are of some interest but the others are given far too much time to say too little. All seem to work for the one studio, and the whole film seems little more than an extended promo.

The shooting of some sex scenes is shown, but all from a distance; there are only glimpses of organs, and none of orifices. Most of the film would be PGA-rated.

One fact of interest is touched on, that performers in gay porn are paid more than in het. porn, but just how much we are not told. The figure of $2000 was mentioned but whether for one act or a feature-length film was not stated. This means that men with female partners may work on camera at sex with men ("gay for pay" as they say), and the fluidity of sexuality was touched on. Where the multi-billion-dollar profits go is not answered, because it is not asked.

A California ordinance, Proposition B, requiring porn actors to be tested regularly and to use condoms in sex scenes, was discussed mainly in negative terms (the costs have driven some of the industry out of the state). An overview of the troubling issues around "barebacking" porn would have been welcome.

This will be of little interest either to the friends of porn or to its enemies.

I am fishead (2011)

Just a waste of time.

[2/10 · 21 May 2014]

I fall between the other two reviews (so far). It's neither dangerous nor interesting, but rather, just a waste of time. There's a great deal of documentary footage of dubious relevance, with a fish logo added digitally or actually.

I guess the high point is the interview with Václav Havel, imprisoned by the Soviets and later first president of the Czech Republic, about what motivated him. Basically, he felt bad when he failed to do good, so he did good in order to feel good. And results might not come immediately, but we act in the hope that they will eventually.

The film itself is a bit of a drug: there's always something going on to keep your attention, but when all is said and done, what is the take-home message? Businesses are psychopathic. Avoid chemical "happiness". Be nice to people (it'll affect not only those people but others they interact with). That's just about it. It's a bit like Occupy, some good intentions, feel-good slogans, token activism, and then...?

Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013)

Important and frightening

[8/10 · 4 August 2013]

This is an important and frightening film, about how Google, Amzaon, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkdin - and IMDb? - harvest our personal information and onsell it to the highest bidder, or to the government. How we don't read that wodge of text in capitals comprising "Terms and conditions" before we click "Accept" - nobody could, it would take a month per year for everything we sign. But even when that text is brief and written in plain English, it gives those corporations unprecedented power over our personal information - including the right to change the rules without telling us, to increase their power without limit and without asking again, and to keep it forever, even after we have "deleted" it.

The film is entertaining, including how a seven year old boy was interrogated about something he had texted; how an Irishman on holiday in the US never got into the country but spent days in confinement instead, because he had used "destroy America" as a figure of speech in a tweet; how people planning a zombie parade during the Royal Wedding were arrested based on the social media planning; and how a TV crime writer was raided based on his Google searches.

I saw this a few days after "We Steal Secrets: the story of Wikileaks". It is the better film, letting the facts speak for themselves more.

And now I'm getting paranoid about what will happen to me for writing this....

Call Me Kuchu (2012)

Brave people, brave story! (Hitchens and Weinberg were right!)

[10/10 · 7 August 2012]

I had vaguely remembered that a gay activist had been killed in Uganda, but didn't realise until the event in the movie that this man, David Kato, who I had been getting to know and empathising with, was the same one.

But the movie does not dwell on his death, more on his life and struggle and that of those around him. His mother is a beautiful character.

I don't know which was worse, the smug, jokey newspaper editor (it's cheekily called the "Rolling Stone") who took no responsibility for any of the hatred he was stirring up or its consequences, or the smug local church people, or the smug, arrogant American evangelist, bringing American-style bigotry to Uganda.

The Anglican Bishop Christopher Senyonjo is a lovable respite from all this hatred, a Ugandan Desmond Tutu. The scenes at David's funeral, where he rescues the body from a local pastor who wanted to straighten out the LGBTI congregation, are very touching.

And yet, it's the same religion both he and the bigots are in the thrall of, and equally drives them both to do good or evil, almost at random, underlining Christopher Hitchen's catchphrase that religion poisons everything, and Steven Weinberg's, that for good people to do evil, that takes religion.

The courage of the local LGBTI people is amazing. We went through just a tiny fraction of that ordeal 26 years ago, and it seemed bad enough at the time. This movie and the dauntless people in it, packing up and moving on when their lives are endangered, and yet fronting up to courts, hostile crowds, policemen, clergy and thugs (sometimes the same people), will give heart to those who are still struggling.

Melancholia (2011)

Could have been worse...

[3/10 · 31 December 2011]

I sat grimly through this because it was said to be beautiful to see and I hoped it might get better. I've given it a day to see if it looked better in retrospect. If I could have warned myself, I'd have said, spend those two hours doing anything or nothing rather than watch this film.

Any beautiful scenes were marred by the hand-held camera-work that was just dizzying.

I think it's the most miserable movie I've ever seen. For pity's sake, if you have the slightest tendency to depression, don't see it. Maybe send your friends - or your enemies - so they can know what depression feels like.

There isn't a single character you can empathise with. Justine (Dunst), presumably the most sympathetic character, having kept her wedding guests waiting two hours, keeps them waiting even longer to go and say hello to - a horse! Almost everyone at the wedding behaves appallingly. Justine's brother-in-law John even commits suicide selfishly, eating everyone else's pills. (Though there is little point in suicide: the planet will do it all quickly enough.) The husband, Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) and the little boy are harmless, but ciphers.

They don't live in a world, with media, governments, people. It's all about them.

The other story, just the end of the Earth, is hackwork. Trier has sacrificed all astronomical and anthropological sense for empty symbolism. John is an astronomer who works out the orbits of planets on paper with a pen. (There is an internet and Google, but "Melancholia" gets only 3 million hits, many about the condition, not the planet that's going to kill everybody.) They are reduced to looking through a handmade loop of wire to figure out if the planet is coming or going. The proposed "Dance of Death" orbit of Melancholia looks as if it is affected by air-resistance. The electrical discharge from Justine's fingertips and the power poles was caused by what? Or if it was symbolic, symbolic of what? Even the last moments were hackwork. The shockwaves I could buy, but fire? What was burning?

What finally killed it for me was the abuse of Wagner (who is hard to abuse). The prelude to Tristan und Isolde was written for a particular, quite well-known context. Trier has ripped it out and pasted it over a completely different one. I don't know how many times it got played right through, but at least three, and much of it was used on several more occasions.

How could it have been worse? Well, I guess the whole UNIVERSE could have ended.

Reflections of the Past (2010)

The elephant in the room...

[8/10 · 14 May 2011]

The enigmatic title hides a thoughtful talking-heads documentary about the Parker-Hulme murder case in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1954. Roman interviews schoolmates of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme (who together killed Parker's mother), a son of one of the counsel and others with a close interest in the case.

Others, such as women who have portrayed the girls in two plays, and especially a minister from the Los Angeles Church of Truth (does any church claim to be any other kind?), have less to contribute.

This is enlivened by re-enactments (of dubious value, some Los Angeles folly standing in for Borovnia), the few contemporary newspaper pictures of the girls, diary entries and newspaper footage eked out with special effects, and recent footage of Christchurch, made poignantly historic on February 22, 2011.

The elephant in the room is of course, Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures". At a Q&A, Roman admitted that this was his point of entry to the case, and a hand-held scene near the beginning, running from the murder scene through Victoria Park, echoes that film. It would have been useful to have included some comparison between history and Jackson's embellishments, such as Alison Laurie and Julie Glamuzina provide in the second edition of their book, "Parker & Hulme, a Lesbian View".

Since Jackson's film leads up to the murder, the most interesting material this one adds is about the trial. The law of the day presented a stark dichotomy. Since their guilt was patent and confessed, the only question the jury had to answer was whether they were "bad" or "mad", and the film explores that in detail. It hinges on the nature of their relationship, and how much they were driven by a shared fantasy. This was imposed by the prosecutorial decision to try them together. Much was made of Pauline's diary at the trial (and in "Heavenly Creatures"), but Juliet also kept one, burnt by her mother, and it has become the elephant NOT in the room.

It suits fiction and symmetry that the two girls were equally involved in each other and planned and committed the murder together, but the truth may be more interesting. (Juliet - as Anne Perry - has given at least one interview about the case, but Pauline remains reclusive.) The suggestion arises that, after a lifetime of abuse, Pauline would have killed her mother Juliet or no Juliet, and that Juliet was a (relatively) innocent bystander. Some people are murderers, but some people are murderees.

The film is marred by a dog-wagging tailpiece about whether they were homosexual. For 15-year-old girls with "crushes" on each other, the question is hardly meaningful. That would be better consigned to outtakes, and more use made of some fantastic murals shown briefly near the end, that we are not told was the work of Pauline after her release.

Tea and Sympathy (1956)

A butterfly in a pitcher-plant

[5/10 · 17 May 2010]

I read the play when I was Tom Lee's age and deeply closetted, and it had a devastating effect: "At last someone understands: just because I'm not like the others doesn't mean I'm - heaven forbid - gay." I thought the play was great - liberating, even.

I saw the film (on TV, with distractions) some 25 years after it was made, myself on the brink of coming out, and noted that it was much less clear that it was about homosexuality than the play had been. Tom's sexual orientation had been blurred down to the question of whether he was "a regular guy" or not. Key speeches like Laura's challenge to Bill's sexuality were missing. And Laura's letter at the end seemed just moralistic, and an obvious sop to the censors.

To see the film today, out and proud, and with the benefit of nearly 50 years of hindsight, I find myself agreeing with many of the comments above, both positive and negative. The film is hard to watch because it is so overwrought. That is easier to understand when you know that all three leads are reprising their stage roles. Even so, there is a desperate tension running right through it. With the possible exception of the faculty wives, not a single person in it is comfortable with their sexuality. The guys are, without exception, over-anxious to prove something, and Laura is frustrated. (Ellie Martin at least knows what she wants - a radio that works - and what she wants to pay to get it.) Overlaid on this, nothing can be explicit, everyone talks all the time in circumlocutions. Of course, that was the rule in films of those days, and possibly real life as well. Therein lies a contradiction that can only be resolved from outside the film and in its future, now. The film was trying to liberate people like me (and heterosexual non-conformists) while staying within the confines of a deeply closetted and homophobic film industry.

Should you see this film? As a piece of gay history, perhaps. As a commentary on a homophobic time, it is instructive, both for what it says and doesn't say. As a worthwhile drama that will involve you in its issues, no. Has it anything worthwhile to say, as someone says above, about the importance of love? If you concentrate on Deborah Kerr's performance and her predicament, perhaps, but it's like watching a beautiful butterfly struggling in a pitcher-plant.

Teorema (1968)

I hated it but don't despise it

[2/10 · 14 March 2010]

Someone said you should look at your mood before rating this film. I had to walk an unnecessary kilometre to buy my ticket, someone was using a cellphone during the credits, and the WHOLE film was shown in a too-wide aspect ratio - after I had alerted the organisers, having seen the problem while watching the splash-page, over and over. (It was shown rather dimly off a DVD.) So I have to give the film a huge discount for my grumpiness.

I didn't like it. I don't despise it, because I think Pasolini was sincere in making it, not trying to put one over us with pretentious piffle (cf Fellini). It's certainly not the worst film ever made, not dishonest, condescending or manipulative, just slow, opaque and uninvolving (but maybe the last is just me; see above).

My (and most people's?) disconnect from Teorema is that we can no longer identify with the Italian Catholic guilt that overcame most of the family after succumbing to Terence Stamp's undoubted charms. He had sex with them (usually at their instigation - to say "he seduced them" is to exaggerate wildly) and a reaction is to be expected, but catatonia? Levitation and autointerment? Bad art? (OK, bad art.)

And is there really a volcanic desert handy to the Milan (?) railway station that anyone can walk to naked without being intercepted?

So when it (finally!) said "FINE" I said "Fine by me."

A Bigger Splash (1973)

Boring film about a boring man

[3/10 · 12 January 2010]

This is a fly-on-the-wall documentary, but the room with the wall and the fly on it isn't very interesting. I hoped to learn something about why Hockney paints what he does and as he does, and/or about who he is. If this film is to be believed, he is a boring, self-obsessed man.

Much of the footage adds nothing to our knowledge of him or his work. Even when he talked about other painters' work it was not informative, since the camera was on him, not on what he was talking about. Only once did the film give an insight into Hockney's painting, cutting from his representation of the refractions of waves on the bottom of a swimming pool as serpentine lines, to the refractions themselves in unpaintable motion.

Far too much (street scenes, people coming, going and standing about, a fashion show, idle chat) seems to have been included for no particular reason at all.

I suspect that the nudity and the gay ambiance, novelties in 1974, have given this film a cachet it never deserved.

Everyone (2004)

Better than that

[7/10 · 4 August 2009]

I wasn't going to review this but there were so many negatives, I feel compelled to add a positive.

This is a sweet little movie, that goes from downbeat to downbeat but ends on an upbeat. The delivery is occasionally a bit clunky (some of the cast still in film school?), but on the whole the notes it strikes are true. Everyone in "Everyone"'s a bit dysfunctional, but everyone has their moments - just like real life.

It is, basically, a comedy. Sometimes the comedy of cringe, and you're saying "Don't go there" or "Don't go in there!" or "Oh no!' but nothing is so stoopid as to suspend your belief. ("Meet the Fockers" this is not.) It takes a little unfunny while to set the scene. Dead babies and children figure rather too prominently for a comedy.

None of the characters is clear-cut; all have light and shade, as in real life, from the mother who seems at first to be a street person herself, to the punk she picks up on the way, to the celebrant whose priestly smoothness is ruffled by a guest who assumes she's lesbian.

Perhaps the funniest moment is the one we don't see. The whole movie looks forward to a big event. Suddenly we're past it and we know exactly what happened, what didn't happen, and why.

Above all this is a Canadian comedy, which is a euphemism for "not a US comedy". As a New Zealander I can relate to its understatement: don't expect too much and you'll love it.

(Chromatic abberation - colour-casting at edges - is sometimes visible near the sides of the screen. Cheap lenses?)

Paper Soldier (2008)

Best of 2008? I don't get it

[3/10 · 27 July 2009]

I'll probably be shot down in flames for this but I was tired and glad when this movie ended. It's been called "the Russian Right Stuff" and "the best movie of 2008" but I just can't see it.

It's a sad, soulful Russian movie about a handsome doctor stuck out in a wilderness that's hardly distinguishable from a gulag, with a few others, including his faithful mistress, working on a project that is almost entirely offscreen. The unconvincing tailcone of a rocket slowly wheels past, and near the end two of the cast (one called "Yuri" - Gagarin?) pose in spacesuits that are a couple of notches better than the one in "Robot Monster", but hardly look waterproof, let alone airtight. Otherwise, there's nothing to tell you it's anything to do with space travel. He gets very depressed and sick, goes back briefly to his wife in Moscow, she follows him back to the gulag, and everyone is embarrassed when she meets the mistress, but his ill-health makes them sink their differences.

There are one or two shots that are stunning for their sheer improbability, like a distant lift-off behind a stoical camel against a vast plain of slush. I'm not asking for SF bells and whistles or bleeps and roars and distorted cheeks, but if they wanted a movie about character, they could have set this one all on a collective farm. Space travel is too big a subject to push (literally) into the distant background like this.

And all the doctors smoke like chimneys.