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Reviews
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
This Film Is A Mess
This film would make your head spin. I still haven't quite figured out how Smiley figured out who the bad guy was, or did he figure it out at all? Did he just lay a trap and figure it out that way? I'd have to watch the whole mess again. The thing is thick with flashbacks, to the point where you don't know if you are coming or going. Here's a good tip; any time you see a Christmas party, that is a flashback. So many confusing aspects! For instance, yes, the guy you see living in a trailer outside the school he is teaching in is actually the guy you saw shot near the beginning of the film; but no, this is not a flashback in this case. How did he get there? Pay attention, and you may find out toward the end of the film. So many other things wrong. In the trailer for this film, you see Smiley and a suspect walking across an airfield with an aircraft landing behind them; the way it is done is gimmicky and unnecessary. Worse, you can clearly see the heat haze rising from the ground; but the men are wearing their coats as if it was the middle of winter! It appears the director strained to squeeze the film into 2 hours, yet the beginning of the film crawls along. I found myself looking at my watch after 1 hour, begging for the film to just move along.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Good concept, but a waste of a great opportunity
I give a 7/10 to a good movie, but this is not a good movie. Like the Curates Egg; it is good in parts. The CGI was not nearly as good as I was expecting from the hype; major disappointment. The technology was not quite ready. This is a movie that should have been made a few years from now, when the CGi will be perfected. The CGi is a crutch for the whole movie; without it, this film would flop like a jellyfish. Acting; awful. Dialogue; atrocious. Writing; childish. The plot-holes have been well documented elsewhere. Wait for this to come up on your TV schedule; it is not worth going out of your way to see. The only thing of interest is to see where the sequel goes from here, and how they knit it into the pre-existing classics.
Living with the Enemy (2005)
How did I know this was a Canadian film?
How did I know this was a Canadian film? Mainly because of its sheer awfulness. There are so many other clues, such as the extremely buttoned-down stiffness and formality of so many of the characters (the Phillip Lauder character, for instance, has dinner with his wife after a hard day's work while still wearing suit and tie! Do Canadians really do that?!)
But more especially, there is the sheer bizarreness of parts of the plot. For instance, the FBI pull Mrs Lauder off the street to threaten her with dire consequences if she won't agree to help them arrest and convict her husband; this is done in a way that is detached from reality in such an extreme manner that it somehow reflects something that seems to come out of the Canadian psyche in a way that is not only recognizable, but uniquely so (why, for example, would Mrs Lauder not immediately go get herself some good legal advice? Any good lawyer would soon set her straight!)
Personally, there is a quality of madness that I think it is all due to the overly long and harsh winters in that otherwise wonderful country. Oh well!
Zonad (2009)
Not bad. I was amused!
This film has received mixed reviews in the press. Either you "get it", it seems, or you don't. I was definitely amused. The film creates a milieu all of its own; a cross between 1950's California and "traditional" Ireland. Some have criticised the setting as being too incredible, in which case they are taking it all too seriously. There are some things that might have been done better. I don't think the production values were great. I didn't like the picture quality, the lighting wasn't great (night scenes in particular were very murky, daytime interior scenes were spoiled by the windows being completely washed out). Perhaps a lot of this is down to the fact that the Carney Brothers change things a lot on the hoof, making it difficult for every one else to keep up. Too bad. Maybe they just need more experience.
Film does miss a few tricks. There was plenty of room to explore how the main protagonists came by their original costumes. Just a few comic touches would have made a difference. They could have be shown literally digging their way out of the rehab institute(a parody of Shawshank Redemption comes to mind). Just simply overlaying the sound of distant baying hounds over their escape through the forest would have been funny. Other things. It could have been funnier, with a little more work, or perhaps more people to work on the script. The boxing match could have been funnier too; there's a whole genre of boxing movies just begging to be parodied, but not here.
Good performances all round. Pearse was very good, and in fact I wonder what it would have been like if he had the lead part. He's a funny guy, and savvy with it. That's not to take anything away from Delaney.
Unfortunately (I sigh) as is so often the case with Irish movies, film is let down by unnecessary crudity. There was no need for the faux-choc use of the F word to describe what Zonad was doing to the women of Ballymoran (they should have gone all the way, by the way, and called it Ballymorawn); it would have been much funnier for the characters to say he was riding them. Also, I didn't think that the cop p*ssing all over some of the main characters was all that funny (believe me, it looks funnier here in print than it is on the screen. It would have been much funnier if they at least made the victims completely sopping, drenched/soaked through). The scene where a major character invites his girlfriend to gargle with his balls (among other intimate invitations) wasn't funny at all. These shenanigans serve only to reduce the audience for the film. The Oirish penchant for having somebody p*ssing or sh*tting at some point is fully indulged, of course.
Film may be especially interesting to some sections of the American audience interested in Ireland and the Irish. There is a saying; "many a true word is said in jest". Zonad is a big joke (in the best sense) but the insights it gives are all the more true for it, bigger and more colorful than they might otherwise be.
Morte a Venezia (1971)
Unendurable
I bought this DVD at a bargain price, and it wasn't worth it. So far, I have endured about half of it, and I will see out the rest of it because of pure dogged determination. It is possible to watch it only in small doses. At the half way point, virtually nothing has happened. True, there are lots of sumptuous pictures of Venice; they belong in a documentary re-creation of what the city looked like at the beginning of the 20th Century. As for the director, all I'll say is watch out for the big blue flowerpot! In fact you can't miss it (there's more than one of them) filling the screen as the camera pans languidly across the lounge of the Lido hotel. For a proper review, see Roger Ebert's verdict; he's bang on the money, although he doesn't seem to have been as bored as I am.
The Tiger's Tail (2006)
Worth seeing
I was an extra on this movie, in the Awards Dinner scene near the beginning, and I looked forward to the finished product with some trepidation because the dialog seemed quite poor. However, i have been pleasantly surprised. This is a good movie, and maybe I'm stupid but I didn't see the ending coming; It thought it was a very good resolution, and I don't understand why one reviewer says it leaves numerous threads hanging. I thought all of the production values the music and everything were very good. My criticisms would be the same for most Irish movies; the relatively poor acting of the more junior actors (I refer in particular to the drunken girlfriend we first encounter in the Temple Bar nightclub. There were other weaknesses, things that could have been much better handled such as the first appearance of the doplleganger, and O'Leary getting coshed in the toilets (again, bad acting by the other actors there). Some things were just stupid, like the statement that the more houses O'Leary builds the more homeless there are; Boorman should stick to the directing and leave the economics to others. Kim shouldn't have attempted the Oirish (sic) accent. It would have been quite believable for O'Leary to have married an American, and better, even.
It gives a reasonably good insight into middle-class Ireland, and a glimpse of the world of the down-and-out (which is the same everywhere, I suppose). I stayed until the very end of the credits.
The Front Line (2006)
A very good movie that deserves to succeed
I'd be inclined to give this movie 8.5 out of 10. It is a refreshing example of a good story well told, in contrast to the contrived pap and movie-star-vehicles that spill out of Hollywood these days. It is an ambitious and brave attempt by the director/writer/producer to do something top-notch for Irish cinema. It has something to show and something to tell. The tagline is well chosen, and the theme is well resolved. The theme is that none of us knows who he is until put to the test. I found the story entirely believable.
Gleeson is something of a man with a mission who tries to do a little bit too much. He brings a racist cleaner/maintenance-man into the plot, in part to demonstrate the man's conversion to good thinking; unfortunately this is done in a way that injures the credibility of the plot, and it would be best if it could be cut entirely before the film goes on broader release.
It has been said that Gleeson has made "a hard-edged underworld thriller with a twist", and he has indeed. It has also been said that "everything happens a little too quickly and Gleeson might have slowed things down to build characters and relationships rather than show them in flashback later on, when it's too late, and we've already decided if we like or dislike those involved". That is particularly true of McSorley's character; a little more time and finesse would have gone a long way toward establishing the basis of his empathy with Joe Yumba.
Gleeson's screenplay is remarkably original, and worth seeing for that reason alone. He spent six weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo in early 2004, meeting people who had been in similar situations. He also researched the ongoing conflict in the State, which has resulted in the deaths of as many as five million people, from horrific acts of brutality.
The showdown between Joe and the gangsters on the capital's Henry Street is a particular highlight, and a piece of modern Irish cinema at its best.
The Front Line has been described elsewhere as "a refreshing, character-driven alternative to the shallow comedies, thrill-less thrillers and bum-numbing budget-chewing two-hour-plus epics currently clogging up your local cinema schedules." So it is. It is not perfect, but its good points far outweigh its bad points, and it is more than a cut above the average. Hopefully Gleeson will go on to do more and better.
Taxi Driver (1976)
This is what TAXI DRIVER is all about
As the movie's tag-line tells us, "On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody." Travis is a nobody trying to become a somebody. His story is the story of what becomes of a man who aspires to be a 'knight in shining armor' in modern times. He wants to do good, and wants to do things right. His dreams set him apart from others, leading to loneliness and alienation. Modern society has no role for this knight; it frustrates his efforts, while at the same time the law allows evil (i.e. Sport and his buddies) to prosper. Travis Bickle would have been perfectly in place in medieval Europe, although he wouldn't have had the smarts or the skills or the money to be a real knight, but he could have been a successful warrior. The modern era provides the technology (i.e. his guns) that allows him to achieve the RESULTS of a real knight. Technology, therefore, levels the playing field, and allows the ordinary guy to be somebody (witness the various presidential assassination attempts of the 20th century, carried out by nobodies). The ordinary guy doesn't have to do anything special to be a superman; all he needs to do is buy a gun. His attempt to assassinate Palantine is a mad effort to become somebody. He apparently decided that Palantine was part of the "scum" problem, and chose him as the representative of the evil he had determined to cleanse. Also, he transfers his bad feelings resulting from Betsy's rejection of him on to Palantine. His decision-making is akin to that of Muslim suicide bombers, whose main objective is to achieve martyrdom, without necessarily being too concerned about the futility of their action on the earthly plane.
We are told that Travis spent time in Vietnam. The fighting there would not have suited him. He needed a straightforward, face-to-face fight, and it is likely that the war in Vietnam broke him. The streets of new York offer him another chance to become a knight, fighting on his own terms. But to him,as a result of his experiences, death is now more real than life. More than a knight, he has the mentality of a kamikaze or an islamist suicide bomber. His death would be of little consequence to him, as the attempt on Palantine makes clear enough; he runs away not because he is afraid of death but because he is afraid of failure, capture and punishment.
Sir Travis's Fair Lady is split into two persons. Betsy is his fair lady, proper. But due to the class differences between them, it is difficult to contrive a situation in which she can also be the damsel in distress. So, Iris is his damsel in distress.
Travis's heart is in the right place (more or less), but he is misguided. Iris is the prisoner of her own foolishness; there is nothing to prevent her from leaving, if she really wants to. Travis didn't have the right to shoot Sport in the gut like that. Usually scriptwriters contrive situations so that the hero is always obliged to kill in self-defense. America's true spiritual foundations are legal, not moral, and so America has become the Land of Pretext where you can do anything you like to your neighbor, just so long as you can provoke him into giving you an excuse/opportunity. But Taxi Driver is written (rather clumsily) to bring ambiguity into the situation. That is why the scriptwriter has Travis shoot Sport in the gut instead of the head; he does not kill him outright (which would have made Travis an outright villain) but he lets Sport live long enough to take a shot at him, so that Travis can blast him again in "self defense". Unfortunately this movie has helped condition the American mind toward pre-emptive violence, which has found it's fruition in the attack on Iraq, with more attacks to come.
In the end, despite his mental illness, lack of intelligence, clumsiness, and naivety, Travis achieves a measure of success by his sheer guts. He has certainly cleaned scum off the streets, and the scriptwriter has seen to it that the scum have no redeeming virtues, so we are not sorry to be rid of them. Travis has also won the respect--if not the heart--of his fair lady, and has grown to the point where he no longer needs to earn her approval. We only hope that he has grown and learned from the experience. In reality, Travis would have been charged with murder for what he did. Consider also that Iris's life was probably wrecked altogether by the experience; like any modern jihadist, Travis's mind is focused too much on achieving his jihad against the street scum--on becoming somebody--and focused too little on the consequences of his actions for other people. He is a hero who has--to a large extent--behaved like a villain, but he is excused any wrongdoing, and there is plenty of hope for the future.
Alternative 3 (1977)
Here's a letter from the author
The film is associated with a book by a guy called Leslie Watkins. It was all meant as a hoax, but Watkins later decided that maybe he had accidentally hit on something. He published the following letter to the editor of Windwords magazine in response to certain questions from her:
Dear Ms. Dittrich:
Thank you for your letter, which reached me today. Naturally, I am
delighted by your interest in Alternative 3 and by the fact that you
plan to sell it in the Windwords bookstore. I will certainly
cooperate in any way I can.
The correct description of Alternative 3 was given to you by the
representative from Penguin Books. The book is based on fact, but
uses that fact as a launchpad for a HIGH DIVE INTO FICTION. In answer to your specific questions:
1) There is no astronaut named Grodin.
2) There is no Sceptre Television and the reported Benson is also
fictional.
3) There is no Dr. Gerstein.
4) Yes, a "documentary" was televised in June 1977 on Anglia
Television, which went out to the entire national network in
Britain. It was called Alternative 3 and was written by David
Ambrose and produced by Christopher Miles (whose names were on
the book for contractual reasons). This original TV version,
which I EXPANDED IMMENSELY for the book, was ACTUALLY A HOAX
which had been scheduled for transmission on April Fools' Day.
Because of certain problems in finding the right network slot,
the transmission was delayed.
The TV program did cause a tremendous uproar because viewers refused
to believe it was fiction. I initially took the view that the basic
premise was so way-out, particularly the way I aimed to present it in
the book, that no one would regard it as non-fiction. Immediately
after publication, I realized I was totally wrong. In fact, the
amazing mountains of letters from virtually all parts of the world-
including vast numbers from highly intelligent people in positions of
responsibility-convinced me that I had ACCIDENTALLY trespassed into a
range of top-secret truths.
Documentary evidence provided by many of these correspondents decided
me to write a serious and COMPLETELY NON-FICTION sequel.
Unfortunately, a chest containing the bulk of the letters was among
the items which were mysteriously LOST IN TRANSIT some four years when I moved from London, England, to Sydney, Australia, before I moved on to settle in New Zealand. For some time after Alternative 3 was
originally published, I have reason to suppose that my home telephone
was being tapped and my contacts who were experienced in such matters
were convinced that certain intelligence agencies considered that I
probably knew too much.
So, summing up, the book is FICTION BASED ON FACT. But I now feel
that I inadvertently got VERY CLOSE TO A SECRET TRUTH. I hope this is of some help to you and I look forward to hearing from you again.
With best wishes,
Leslie Watkins
So, that's what leslie Watkins says. How extraordinary now that Global Warming transpires to be real, and may well destroy the world. I hope I won't be around to witness it.
Match Point (2005)
Has everyone lost their senses?!!!
I watched this film in Dublin. Where to begin, with criticism? Perhaps the first point to note is the atrociously stilted dialogue. Is that what was intended? Did Woody Allen think it was supposed to be funny/ironic? All I can say is that the few laughs that this movie did get were of a very uncertain nature; the audience--more often than not--didn't seem to know whether they laughing with the movie, or at it.
The crime that occurs is so out of character that it is really quite absurd. But Roger Ebert says: "Let us talk instead in terms of the underlying philosophical issues. To what degree are we prepared to set aside our moral qualms in order to indulge in greed and selfishness?" Now, that really is making a silk purse out of a sow's ear!
The critics who have praised this movie seem to me to have read far too much into it. It seems to me that the whole thing was a shaggy-dog story that led up to one big joke at the end, and it wasn't worth the wait as far as I was concerned. However it is clear that most reviewers in IMDb think otherwise. Has the world gone mad?!
Blood Vows: The Story of a Mafia Wife (1987)
The girls love this movie
This is not a bad movie at all. If you look at the Ratings on this site, though, you will see a big difference between men and women. Women (especially younger age groups) love it! Men hate it. It is a very involving love story that succeeds in capturing the emotions. Incredible as this may seem, it is a truly romantic story. The reasons it hasn't done better are:
- Some bad direction has the FBI's attempts to make contact with the heroines look really stupid and clumsy, to the degree that it almost blows your suspension of disbelief.
- Some of the money spent on this movie could have been much better spent. There is a helicopter sequence involving a shootout that was completely overblown and seemed to have ambitions to look like a movie about the Vietnam war. It portrayed gangsters going on what was in effect a suicide mission, and the real gangsters aren't into that. A more limited and under-stated gunfight sequence (more along the lines of THE GODFATHER; short, nasty and brutish) would have been cheaper and better.
- The end is rather excellent and courageous, but it shocks the audience in the way that it NEEDS to shock, without pandering to the demands to indulge the addiction of today's audience for sugary endings, and so the movie gets punished in the Ratings. Nonetheless, maybe the ending could have been handled a little better, to take the sting out of it.
There is plenty of room for a sequel showing what happens next, even though the original was filmed years ago.
Salinui chueok (2003)
Superb, world-class film making
It is difficult to know how best to describe the merits of this gripping yarn. The story is very well done; funny and horrifying, like life itself. the direction, action, lighting, acting, sound; all superb. The characters are entirely believable and engaging. While the movie deals with adult themes in an adult way, it is not in the least distasteful, even when for instance one hapless suspect is apprehended masturbating at a crime scene. The one sex scene is borderline hilarious and true to life. Funniest sequence of all is when the lead detective is looking in the sauna for the hairless suspect. And when he told the sauna staff to look out for the hairless one "They just smirked at me!" The various interrogation scenes are very well done. The conflict among the detectives is very convincing. The economy of storytelling is such that the viewer cannot afford to miss a single minute, unlike typical Hollywood pap where you could practically go and take a bath or a a shower, come back and you won't have missed a thing. A great, fascinating commentary on Korea at that time also.
The Lilac Bus (1990)
Here's one for the Girls Night-In
Not a bad movie. There are plenty worse ways to spend 90 minutes! Movie is comprised of a number of sub-stories about the lives and loves of the regular passengers of a bus that is used to bring workers between Dublin city and their homes in a small Irish country village (Doon-something-or-other) every weekend. It is based on the novel of the same name by Maeve Binchy, the world famous Irish author. The device of the bus is not a bad one, and the stories of the passengers interweave in a good way. The stories are pulled together into an almost coherent whole by the romance of the central character; the bus driver.
This is not a bad "chick flick", but I think it would bore most men senseless! Looking at the ratings, viewers seem to love it or hate it, with most of them loving it.
Anyway, it has worthy heroes an heroines to anchor the stories. However, in a certain sense, it is the type of novel that is not suitable for adaptation to the screen, as it has no action to speak of and it deals mainly with the emotional conflicts of a rather large number of characters in a short period of time (90 mins). Such stories are best confined to books, where the reader can access the interior dialog of the characters, whereas that dialog is almost impossible to display on screen.
Nonetheless, the picture gives a pretty good exposition of Irish society in recent times, but things have changed a lot since the book was written, and the current social relevance is limited. Perhaps most important, it is mercifully not an "Oirish" production, by which I mean it escapes stage-Irish portrayals of Irish characters, unlike many (most?) Irish productions that succumb to the temptation of trading on stereotypes of what Irish people are supposed to be like.
The Irish countryside is shown off to pretty good effect, though more might have been made of it. For some reason, I thought that the photography was somehow too soft-focused and lacking in sharpness/clarity. It looks a bit faded as a result.
Sin City (2005)
Triumph of Style over Substance
I went to see this with a 61 year old female friend. She eventually had to avert her eyes and we left after about 45 minutes! I myself could deal with the more-or-less pornographic violence, but really nothing prepares the viewer for it. Viewers who are connoisseurs of Frank Miller's work will appreciate the movie best, and it must seem heaven-sent where they are concerned. Perhaps they find the grotesque violence--which is entirely gratuitous--somehow satisfying? However I believe that from an objective point of view that the various stories are pointless and don't really go anywhere. What is this movie telling us? That serious corruption exists in the world? We know that already, but in fact this movie parodies the real evils of the world and makes them seem un-real and cartoonish to the degree that a naive viewer might dismiss the problem of evil as being entirely imaginary. The closest any of the male characters come to showing any virtue is when they seek revenge, which is not a virtue at all, nor is it manly. I am dismayed to see that this movie has made it into the Top 250. It is not a great movie, it is merely different. The style is so different that it is refreshing, but in the end it is just a sugar-rush, and most viewers will quickly tire of it, I hope.
633 Squadron (1964)
The music is a classic of movie music. It's the best part of this film
The music is a classic of the movie-music genre, and it is worthwhile just to hear it. It's the best thing about this film. Much of the special effects work (indeed, most of it) is not watchable in this day and age. A lot of the acting is quite wooden, to the point of being comical (have a good look at the faces of the aircrews just before disaster strikes!). However the part played by Robertson is instructive, as it displays to modern audiences a stolid type of leadership that may have had its place in the past, although modern audiences will not relate to it as well. The story itself is so cliché-ridden that it might have been written by a thirteen year-old. The basic premise of the story--that the Nazis needed fuel produced in Norway in order to fuel (yes; fuel) their new rocket weapons--is just too absurd; a flabby, semi-literate adaptation/transmogrification of the true story behind the film "Heroes of Telemark".
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
If you like emotional self-flagellation, you'll love this movie
Throughout his career Clint Eastwood's roles have walked a fine like between being morally right and being morally wrong. In this movie he once again falls down on the wrong side of that line with a resounding "thud". His character's decisions are ones that no human has a right to make. I can say no more about this particular movie, but if his movie career is examined from the very beginning, we see him glory in violence and killing on manufactured and contrived pretexts, and he goes on. It is no exaggeration to say that his influence on western civilization has been very great; it has also been very unfortunate. If the world was full of Clint Eastwoods, we'd be in a lot of trouble.