mannoe Reviews

The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985 TV Movie)

Sad and Bad

[1/10 · 30 August 2007]

I only watched this as it came as part of the set with the first classic film, and dear me, it stinks. It's a shame to see an actor of Lee Marvin's stature stoop so low for a few bucks. Everyone in it seems to be mugging to the camera as if to say, "hey we know it's rubbish but who cares? I know it was made for TV but such contempt for the audience does no-one any favours especially the reputations of once legendary screen figures. TV had started to come of age by the 80's and production executives had started to allow SOME level of quality, but then again, the lowest common denominator seems to rule on US networks. I hate to use such an obvious yardstick, but the fact that nothing of worth gets blown up shows us how cheap and nasty the whole thing was. The plot is utterly ridiculous, production values pathetic, and it's just abysmal from all points of view. I wish I'd never had to see it....avoid at all costs.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

A ship too far

[2/10 · 27 June 2007]

The first two instalments of this, let's face it, jumped up thrill ride, were bearable from a visual point of view because there was some imagination in the screenplay, and a knowing and ironic take on the old standbys of the genre. This one however is so convoluted and archly constructed that even allowing for the still impressive effects, I neither knew or cared what was going on within the first half hour; it just got more and more silly, confusing, and boring to boot. Enough is enough, there was no story to begin with, and we forgave them that..but no more...I like Johnny Depp and no doubt he has bills to pay, but I never want to see him ponce around like that ever again, it's pathetic, the only bright spot in the whole thing was Keith Richards, he has actually got screen presence, and knocked everyone else off the screen in his brief appearance...not worth waiting a whole 2 hours for though. Forget this rubbish....yuck.

The Boondock Saints (1999)

What a load of.....

[1/10 · 2 June 2006]

I just saw this on DVD, and can't think of enough bad things to say about it: it was made in 1999 apparently, and must have marked the tipping point of Willem Dafoe's descent into buffoonery...his gay FBI agent's poncing around is an insult to his craft and I can only wonder that the crew were being told what to do by him and not the other way round. As for David del Rocco, well he must have been an investor in the film, because no sensible casting director would give him a job mowing lawns otherwise, he's about as funny as a rectal tumour.Add in dreadful direction, awful acting from the entire cast, stupid script, pathetic plot, ridiculous accents etc etc, and you have a waste of celluloid that has made me feel like disinfecting the screen I saw it on. I can't believe that people actually put up money to make this rotten muck, I've seen better movies with Wings Hauser in them..totally vile, cinematic putrescence...avoid like the plague-ridden thing it is.

The Hunted (2003)

Boyish Nonsense

[2/10 · 14 December 2005]

Adolescent wankfest of the worst order: what is it about knife movies? The only other one I recall was A Grande Arte with Peter Coyote about PER SEV or some nonsense, and it was as stupid as it sounds. The basic suspension of disbelief required for this film is too much of a burden. For example, when the del Toro character is being pursued through the WET forest of the Pacific Northwest, he finds time to sit down next to a waterfall, never mind the police helicopters buzzing around, LIGHT A FIRE, and forge steel in it!!!! I've done a bit of camping in various sorts of terrain, and finding enough decent dry timber in a rainforest to cook your food is enough of a task, but where you would find the amount of dry hardwood to reach the temperatures required to make a knife out of some scrap steel lying about is something the deluded scriptwriter obviously never thought about, but then again maybe the steel warmed up while he was constructing the elaborate swinging log man-trap that nearly kills Tommy Lee Jones who is in hot pursuit just behind him, just as well all those ropes and stuff was left in the woods by careless campers!!!. No doubt some survivalist ex-green beret with a degree in metallurgy will correct my opinions...but I'd like to see it done. What I find amazing is the amount of reviews applauding such an obviously ridiculous and fantastical load of garbage. It's like something John Milius might have done in an exercise book in primary school. Anybody over 14 should avoid this like the plague.

Die Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel (2003)

a jewel

[10/10 · 1 December 2005]

The camel wasn't the only one weeping when I saw this, and anybody unaffected by the simplicity and magic of this film has either no heart or no brain, probably both. A document of a vanishing world and a emotional experience in its own right, it gives me hope in the human race that films like this can still be made amongst the tide of popcorn. Whether or not it is a "real" documentary is irrelevant: it's a story that, on the face of it, should be as boring as guano, but the lack of any music apart from that provided by the environment and the participants works for rather than against that factor, providing a "reality" that surpasses most documents of this nature. All bored gameboy brats should be forced to see it.

Love and Other Catastrophes (1996)

not catastrophic enough

[5/10 · 14 November 2005]

The one word review for this effort would have to be twee. The words wet and trite also come to mind, but it has some things in its favour. The relatively unconcerned approach to the depiction of the relationship between the two lesbians is refreshingly focused purely on the internal dynamic, and not milked for any audience reaction. This I feel would be in stark contrast to a similar film made by Americans. Over there the concept of sexual deviation has moral overtones that are not as important in most sections of our occasionally more enlightened society, and there are several in-jokes for film-students, clumsily handled though they may be. As a detached observer of the behavioural mores of this group, it seems incredibly bourgeois as well: they are all so clean and bright-eyed. Perhaps this is just a reflection of the socio-economic background of the director: I lived in Fitzroy and Carlton in my younger days, and the Melbourne Uni students I met had a harder edge than this bunch of fluffy ducks. Their concerns were, shall we say, less egocentric. But I show my age, and the fact that I never went to Uni as a youngster, and perhaps have a more prosaic perception of it.

The story is utter guff really, girl/boy meets/splits up with girl/boy/girl, overcomes obstacles and they all live happily ever after. Deep it ain't, there are absolutely no motivational insights into any character: they are all ciphers from a psycho-sexual point of view, and we are just invited to laugh along with then without knowing who they are, why they are there, or what they want beyond the Women's Weekly dream…spare me!! It is a nice little effort from a novice director, cheaply done, and Frances O'Connor is always good to look at, but really…who cares about these dills and their little koffee-klatch? Not even some gratuitous nudity would have saved this one in my books.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

the original and the best

[14 November 2005]

Rightly regarded as a classic, and perhaps best appreciated today minus the Studio-imposed prologue and ending, Don Siegel's study of a small-town overtaken by aliens reveals the paranoia at the heart of American society at the time. The fear which was sweeping through the country whipped up by McCarthyism meant that the idea of the untrustworthy neighbour who might be in fact a Godless communist had permeated public thinking to a deep level after the several years this process had been eating away at the body politic. The references in the script to the loss of "love" was a consequence of a belief that in totalitarian societies, the regimentation of existence quashed emotion. The idea that spies and agents were infiltrating America dedicated to its overthrow from within may seem somewhat amusing in retrospect: the spies that were active were usually after scientific information that the Soviet union needed to compete with the US in both the economic and military spheres. The sheer ridiculousness of a workers revolution being possible in such a conspicuously wealthy society seemed not to register at the time. This paranoia may well have been a hangover from the 30's when the system virtually collapsed and the idea of the worker's paradise had some appeal. The other current running through this work is the attendant concern about powerlessness in an era of scientific progress. The Bomb and its implications had started to percolate through society as well: did they have a two-edged sword? Siegel used a few touches of standard "noir" filming techniques to good effect as the realisation of their predicament dawns upon the Doctor and his paramour, and there is a reasonable frisson of sexuality between them in dialogue and intimate close-ups which helps us to view them as just people as opposed to an authority figure which the "doctor" so often is in film language of the time: ("trust me"). The scene where they discuss the body on the pool-table is an oddity, it stretches credulity, but perhaps martini-soaked bourgeois Americans of the time had a familiarity with corpses outside of our understanding. The effects are primitive by today's standards, but it was a small budget film, although one may even pick up a bit of Eisenstein's influence in the crowd scenes toward the end, which shows that Siegel was doing a lot with the small resources to hand. I always remember the scene where they hide under the boards at the mine as a beautiful piece of editing and composition, and it has more impact and tension than the rest of the subsequent night chase put together. As fresh as the day it was made.

Blue Velvet (1986)

watch it again

[7 November 2005]

Film being such a social experience, it is surprising how the perceptions of others can influence your reading of a particular drama. I first saw this film in a packed house in Paddington in Sydney, and my girlfriend and I were practically the only heterosexuals in the place. The audience howled with laughter from the opening montage and this continued unabated throughout. They went into communal paroxysms at the scene where Frank makes his first appearance, and by the time he was raping Dorothy, were LITERALLY rolling on the floor amongst the spilt popcorn and beating their fists on the carpet like demented children. I've seen quiffed rockers seriously hooning it up at the 1962 premiere of Kid Galahad in a small town, and have worked as a bouncer at our local cinema for teen film marathons which can get pretty rowdy, but I've never seen such sheer hysterical carryings on from an audience as that screening of Lynch's film. I came away in a pretty bad mood from the whole thing and virtually dismissed the film. I was later persuaded to get it out on DVD, and it took on a completely different light, I began to view it as a masterpiece of dry satire on the American small-town paradise Andy Hardy image. It had a halo of confrontational excellence, which appealed to my admittedly dark sense of humour, and went where no other mainstream film or director had been, or would dare to go. Being able to hear the actual dialogue was a big plus as well, and I cherished every nuance. Watching it again nearly 20 years later, I now see what that bunch of screamers were laughing at: it is as camp as it gets, and possibly I couldn't see it at the time because to my particular view it was primarily the work of a auteur, and only coincidentally a piece of entertainment. They saw a riotously knowing take on post-modern sensibility, and were in on the joke. I saw a serious work of art breaking down barriers. Whether it is both, or falls somewhere between, is up to the preconceptions of the viewer.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

groundbreaker

[7 November 2005]

Modern sensibilities don't seem to appreciate the gallows humour of this film, going by the reaction of the other students today. The people of the mediaeval world, (I feel) would have reacted more knowingly to its depiction. Death was a familiar to them to an extent our cossetted society cannot begin to imagine. Its personification was a given. The humour also runs counter to the rather bleak image that we have of Bergman and his oeuvre, but serves its purpose in this masterpiece. The sardonic sidekick unconcerned with the loftier ideals underpins the nobility of his master. He knows the true nature of their 10-year journey that has led them nowhere but back to where they started.

The allegorical tone of the duel with not only death, but futility in all its guises, elevates the conflict of self-realisation in the knight to philosophical levels that resonate still. The answers to these questions elude us even more today, than they did in the world of an omnipotent Church. The very fact that we still ask them imbues the film with a timeless majesty. I felt, never having seen this before, that its depiction of the mediaeval world was cinematically groundbreaking as far as I am aware. The gritty and lusty picture of the lives of the ordinary folk is in total contrast to the Knights and stone fireplaces in garish chivalrous codswallop churned out by Hollywood. I think that the only film produced by the American studios that ever dealt in any real way with the lives of ordinary people in that era was The War Lord in 1965. The concern with the inner questions of moral and ethical fortitude as plague sweeps the land is handled realistically, unlike the kingly power struggles and ethereal romance of your standard post -Arthurian romp. Perhaps the Victorian fascination with the works of Sir Walter Scott et al didn't resonate in dour windswept Scandinavia, and their recollections of the period are far more prosaic.

Three Colors: Blue (1993)

twa colours boring

[7 November 2005]

I haven't seen the other films in this famous trilogy, but had been led to believe that they were exceptional pieces of film-making. This first instalment didn't fill me with anticipation for the other two. There just isn't much going on really. Juliette Binoche is a very attractive lady in that gamine way so beloved of the French, and there is no shortage of languid close-ups. The director is so obviously enamoured of his lead that one wonders about the scene behind the scenes. The direction is artfully tricky and contemplative but the story, as such, is so trite as to be soap-worthy. The preponderance of blue filter was also overdone: to my untrained eye; it seemed that a better director might have used location/lighting to create the effect more often than he did, (the pool), rather than relying on such a tired device. The relationship with the other composer is standard Mills&Boon, and the plot of the damaged sensitive heroine being brought out of the self-imposed shell of grief is similarly tired. The discovery of the mistress with child, and the rapprochement therewith, may seem to Anglo-Saxon eyes to be a revelatory dramatic device to illustrate the depth of her love for the dead husband and his son-to-be, and a self-discovery through forgiveness, but I didn't see it that way. I spent some time in France as a teenager, and cheerfully experienced at first hand the rather cavalier attitude of the locals to marital arrangements. It is considered quite acceptable, if not normal, to have a lover/mistress outside the marriage, and this has a social cachet, especially amongst the bourgeoisie. Therefore, to my, and I would assume a European eye, this climax (no pun) to the drama seemed a rather flat conclusion to a story that never really got out of the blocks to take us anywhere. Nice to look at but nothing to chew on: a confection.

Bullfighter (2000)

utterly the worst film in 20 years

[1/10 · 1 November 2005]

I didn't know Willem Dafoe was so hard up for bucks that he'd disgrace himself with such shocking hamming in this monstrosity. Hell: I'll donate that money that I was going to send to Ethiopia if he's that desperate. I have never seen such a pathetic and disgusting film for a long time...who paid for this? They are either pulling some tax scam or insane. A 5-year old would be ashamed of the plot, and I'd rather get cancer than sit through more than the hour I suffered already. Everybody involved should be locked up for a year in the sodomy wing of a third world prison. Avoid at all costs. I'd give it minus 10 if possible...unbelievable.