I liked "To Live And Die In LA" when I saw it years ago. I might give it a re-watch to see if still holds up.

Never saw Runaway Bride. I always found Pretty Woman extremely overpraised and quite formulaic and Runaway Bride looked even moreso.

I liked Sister Act when it first came out in 1992. I was 14 at the time. I re-watched it recently and noted it has not aged well. It has some amusing moments. But on the whole is not the laughfest I once found it to be.

I actually quite enjoyed the soundtrack but I have a soft spot for a lot of 80s new wave so there you go. As for Sister Act, I enjoyed it quite a bit as a kid but there is no way it'll past muster for me now. Anyway, on to the most recent film I saw: World's Greatest Dad. An entertaining dark comedy that, like any good film of that sort, successfully exploits unsavory material for laughs. Robin Williams is effectively reigned-in and under control as the title character, Lance Clayton, a somewhat meek poetry teacher whose son, Kyle (played with unrestrained gusto by Daryl Sabara) is every parent's worst nightmare, the kind of kid that would make anyone extol the virtues of filicide. I dunno if I should mention the pivotal event that occurs past the half-hour marker (although, you already know it if you've read James' review) but suffice it to say that it's after this point that movie really takes off and hits it zenith as a satire. There may not be too many belly laughs here - although your mileage may vary - but I defy anyone not to at least chuckle throughout the film. The film isn't perfect - in particular, the tonal shifts between comedy and drama aren't always handled smoothly - but it's definitely still worth seeing and now it has me awaiting director Bobcat Goldthwait's next film, God Bless America, even more (the red band trailer already has me excited for that one!) *** out of ****

The Fall. Lee Pace plays a stuntman, Roy, paralyzed by an injury and in pain both physically and emotionally. He befriends Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a five year old Romanian girl who has broken her arm while picking fruit and who is wandering the premises of the hospital. Roy starts telling her fantasy stories which her imagination brings vividly to life and populates with the people she meets at the hospital. Roy is doing the Scheharazade bit, luring the girl to procure morphine for him as a price to continue the story, but, unlike Scheherazade, his motive isn't life but suicide.

This movie is beautiful, even breathtaking, switching between fantasy and painful reality until the two start blending and even the fantasy becomes painful. It has it's flaws (Untaru is often hard to understand, and when Roy breaks down, it's painful to watch in more than one way), but I was willing to let that pass because I was so caught up in Tarsem's incredible visions. Since it does have those flaws, I give it 8.5 instead of 9 out of 10. To me a film like this is worth ten more conventional films.

Troy (Director's Cut)

The choice of material to adapt, along with many of the changes made during the aptatation, ultimately make for a strange and uneven viewing experience.

The major problem is that there is no major protagonist for the audience to be able to root for. The closest we get is Achilles but he's basically aligned himself with the bad guys, lead by Agamemnon.

Generally, I am all for moral complexity when it comes to developing your characters, but Troy never sets itself up as anything other than popcorn entertainment and in any case most of the characters themselves aren't all that morally complex. Hector is a complete boy scout all the way through. His father makes some stupid decisions but is otherwise shown as completely honerable. Paris is generally presented sympathetically, but is fairly shallowly developed. Agamemnon is pretty much a jerk all the way through. And so on.

At this point I should admit that my familiarity with The Illiad is basically with the cliff notes version (although I did read the Odyssy in highschool) but I thought that Homer was a Greek? Wouldn't he have portrayed the Greeks in a little more heroic fashion? I mean, they're literally shown killing babies, raping woman, and the slaughtering of many innocents once they get inside the gates of Troy with their little horse trick.

In any case, the closest we get to a hero is with Hector which makes the ending, well, anticlimactic, even if you don't know what's going to happen once the Trojan Horse shows up.

On the plus side, it's a lot of fun watching Achilles fight and the battle sequences are generally well executed. But other than that, there's not a lot here for one to recommend. 2.5 stars out of 4.
-Jeremy

Homer generally played the Trojans sympathetically (except, if I remember Paris). Hector generally comes across as the most admirable character in The Iliad, which makes his death tragic.

It's not just Homer, either. One of Euripides's plays is The Trojan Women.

Saw two movies again the other day, one that I had seen before and felt like revisiting and another that I hadn't yet seen but kinda regret seeing it now (incidentally, both films came out in 2010). Let's start with the bad first.

The Other Guys - Well, maybe calling it bad is a bit harsh but it's still a pretty listless, lackluster affair. I'm not sure what lead so many critics (James included) to give this one favorable marks; oh I may have chuckled once or twice but for the most part, I just kept waiting for the whole thing to end. Will Ferrell plays Will Ferrell and while that may work for some people, I found him to be annoying as hell in this particular movie. Mark Wahlberg does what my friend referred to as a bad SNL version of his character from The Departed. I'll admit that some of his intentionally over-the-top abrasiveness was a bit funny at first but it very quickly grew tiresome. Next time Wahlberg wants to dip his hand into the comedy pool, I hope he picks something a little less broad and with more of an edge. Perhaps the best scenes belong to Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, both of whom trade effectively on their larger than life personalities to portray a pair of "hero" cops who would think nothing of causing millions of dollars in property damage on account of a minor drug bust. It's a little sad that the comedic highlight of the film comes when At least, the action sequences are clearly rendered and over-the-top enough to be mildly diverting but it's pretty clear that the filmmakers intended for the comedic elements to take center stage so the adrenaline rush is kept to a minimum. Honestly, I feel that this might have been a much better film had it gone more of the Hot Fuzz route and perhaps satirized the action-comedy sub-genre rather than just becoming yet another somewhat boring entry into it - and the R-rated edge would have doubtlessly been welcome here. (** out of ****)

On to much better things... Animal Kingdom - This of course would be the film that I had seen before and liked enough to consider it worth a second look (and I really wish that James would get around to seeing and reviewing this fine film). I only wish that The Other Guys had been funnier because it might have been the perfect antidote to the darkness of this particular film. I'm just gonna copy and slightly edit my Flixster review since I feel that what I wrote there could just as easily sum up my feelings now. Basically, I found this to be an excellent Australian example of the sort of slow-cooking thriller that has become more prevalent on this side of the ocean (and usually features George Clooney in the lead) but this one is even grittier and grimmer. It manages to maintain a constant aura of dread without injecting needless action into the narrative. There are many opportunities for this to turn into an explosive bullet fest but all of them are consistently eschewed. The storyline might invite comparisons to more visceral, in-you-face crime films such as GoodFellas and Scarface but in terms of the deliberate, unhurried manner in which freshman film-maker David Michôd allows things to unfold, one could just as easily mention this in the same breath as Jean Melville's classic, Le Samourai, and more recent thrillers like Michael Clayton and The Constant Gardener. Moments of violence, when they do occur, are brief and shocking; the ending, in particular, is stark and surprising. While the occurrence that closes the film is perhaps inevitable, especially given the events that lead up to it, the manner in which it's orchestrated still manages to catch us unawares. Also, as it proves during its early passages, this film is not beyond disposing of a supposedly main character quickly and without warning. The tension in this film is generated more by the characters and their relationships than by superficial "suspense-building" tactics. The acting is solid all around with the standouts being Oscar-nominee Jacki Weaver as Janine "Smurf" Cody, the grandmother from hell who dominates her household with a borderline incestuous love for her sons (some of the film's slim dark humor stems from this) and Ben Mendelssohn as the oldest and most psychotic of the clan. Mendelssohn's character, Andrew 'Pope' Cody, might not seem like much of a threat initially, with his rather calm and collected demeanor, but as the movie progresses, his truer, more volatile personality begins to emerge and it ain't pretty. Lead actor, James Frecheville, provides our entry point into this dangerous world with his solid performance. For the most part, his character, 17 year-old Joshua (or 'J' as he's referred to throughout the film) is emotionless and withdrawn. Some might call his acting wooden but for me, this was the perfect approach to portraying someone who has learned to close himself off from all of the horrors that he sees around him (as the movie opens, we learn that his mother has just OD'ed on heroin, which prompts him to contact his grandma and arrange to live with her and his uncles - all without missing a beat!). As the stakes get higher and higher, the actor becomes more alive. His breakdown when someone he truly cares about finally gets hurt is all the more powerful because of the reticence that he has shown for most the movie. The actor in the cast that is likely to be familiar to American audiences would be Guy Pearce (his breakthrough role in this country was as the lead in Memento but he has also appeared in L.A. Confidential and more recently in The Hurt Locker). Here in his role as Detective Nathan Leckie, the "good cop" who tries to take 'J' under his wing with the goal of using him to bring down his crooked family, he is steady and reliable but he wisely doesn't try to steal the spotlight. The rest of the cast includes Luke Ford as Darren, the youngest of the Cody clan and Joel Edgerton (who's star is quickly on the rise on both sides of the ocean) as Barry "Baz" Brown, a close family friend and partner in crime. It's a shame that this fine film hasn't gotten much exposure despite all the critical acclaim - not to mention Weaver's much-deserved Oscar nomination - because it richly deserves an audience that can appreciate intelligently-written thrillers that move at their own pace but are still capable of keeping viewers enthralled for the entire running length. (***1/2 out of ****)

Funny how the Trojan horse and fall of Troy isn't even from The Illiad

I just saw the trailer for this film. I am most definitely interested in checking it out. Nothing like a little cathartic exploitation violence to make a person feel good.

Ben-Hur(Silent Version)

It's fairly interesting in how the silent version of Ben-Hur compares to the Heston Ben-Hur. For one thing it's an hour shorter, much better-paced and Jesus is better integrated into the story...as in, he's actually a part of the story instead of being a glorified extended cameo. But the Heston version had a more coherent story and a bit more emotion in it. But on the other hand, this Ben-Hur has a lot more violence in its heart!

7/10

Did this version have Mr.Burns tapping his fingers together and saying, "Exxxxccceelllent."? If not, then who cares?

Saw John Carter. T'was a'ight. I felt like I needed a guidebook to keep track of all the weird names and cultures.

If they ever adapted the 1930s Superman, this is probably what it would look like. Crazy super-jumps and boulder-swinging.

Marnie (1963) **1/2

My 30th Hitchcock film! But not a very good one. All sexual repression and Freudianism. Very 50s/early 60s. But without a thriller plot. I'll take Spellbound any day.

I love New Wave as well - it's the music I grew up with , after all - but Wang Chung is no New Wave, it's just very bad 80ies pop. Anyway, no use arguing musical tastes.

As for 'World's Greatest Dad', good review and a good movie.



I agree that the Freudian stuff is simplistic and dated and that 'Marnie' doesn't work as a thriller or mystery, but I still like 'Marnie' very much as a film on obsession and sexual perversion (and most definitively more than 'Spellbound', which is just too contrived, in my opinion). How did you like Sean Connery's performance? I think his charisma and screen presence work very well in 'Marnie'. I can hardly think of another actor of that era who could have made his character work.

I most recently watched a movie, which reminded me of 'Marnie' and 'Vertigo' as well as Park Chan-Wook's vengeance movies:

The Skin I Live In (2011)
A successful plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas) with his own private clinic has illegaly developed a fireproof artificial skin, which is connected to the beautiful woman with the pale complexion and skintight gauze costume, who he keeps locked up and under surveillance in a room in his mansion. When he is ordered to abandon his unethical research, this triggers events involving rape, suicide, dark family secrets and a criminal in a tiger suit.
Pedro Almodóvar's latest movie could be described as a sort of suspense thriller/ Dr. Frankenstein horror movie hybrid or as a bizarre arthouse melodrama on (sexual) identity, perversion, family relations and revenge. Irrespective of categorisation, this movie is deliciously twisted and notably well made, particularly the direction, acting and Bernard Herman-inspired music deserve mention. This won't appeal to everyone, but I like movies on the threshold between horror/thriller and arthouse movies in general and think that 'The Skin I Live In' is an outstanding example of this type of film - 8/10.

Goon (2011)

Remember the episode of the Simpsons were Mel Gibson whilst referring to Homer J says "I make movies for guys like him" . I loved that because it spoke an unapologetic truth about guys and guys movies. I like to think that no matter how old or 'mature' we get, a good formulaic, low-brow 90 minute fight-fest will always do the business on a Friday or Saturday night, and Goon, for me, fits the bill.

8/10

Layer Cake (2004)*

Of all the British gangster films of the past 15 years, this is one that stands the test of time owed to a better standard of acting and a slightly more grown-up script.

8.5/10

*rewatch

Game Change (2012)

This made-for-HBO hype of the week movie draws from the book of the same name about the 2008 US presidential campaign. Unlike the book (which I have not read, BTW) which covers most of the main candidates in the contest, the movie cherrypicks specifically the GOP side of the campaign and specifically focuses the rise of Sarah Palin. This is not of course without controversy, as some of the actual people involved in the story have either confirmed or blasted the contents of the "tabloid" book and subsequent movie.

Palin (Julianne Moore) comes off as a Chauncy Gardener type; not fully vetted by the McCain camp, she is swept up in the national firestorm of the campaign. While she initally looked great on paper to the McCain operatives, it was too late before they realized that she had limited exposure to even basic concepts of Federal importance (foreign relations, monetary policy, geopolitical history, etc.) The one thing Palin could do was deliver pre-scripted lines and connect with everyday Americans, which the movie details as "triumphs" in various speeches and events, but with an undercurrent of fraud because she could not handle one-on-one interviews and was clearly not qualified to be "a heartbeat away from the presidency"; especially when that heartbeat belonged to a 72-year old cancer survivor.

McCain (Ed Harris) is distant and aloof, only exposed to Palin's successes and insulated from her private trials and tribulations by one of his campaign managers (Woody Harrelson). At the end of the day, McCain doesn't blame himself or his team for the Palin selection; he sees that with the financial collapse in 2008 that his campaign was largely doomed no matter the VP candidate he would have chosen. The Palin selection did what it was supposed to do; it excited the base and resurrected his flagging campaign. The effects were just too short-lived.

The performances in the movie we fine enough, probably the only issue being Harris who was a bit too "strong" to be John McCain. At the end of the day, though, movies (and books) like this are tough to judge because the consumer is never quite sure about the veracity of the events as portrayed. As a character study, it was interesting I suppose, but as a "history lesson", I'm not so sure. Perhaps a better way would have been to have a "fictionalized" version of events as the author saw them a la Primary Colors.

1.5 / 4.0

I liked Connery quite a lot. I think his particular brand of macho chauvinism (and, arguably, misogyny) was very well-suited for Hitchcock.

I finally caught up with Invictus a few days ago. Overall it's a well-made film, and the script was actually better than I expected. Unfortunately, there's a void in the middle of the film because of Morgan Freeman's performance. This has to be the worst performance I've ever seen him give - he sits and stands and smiles and frowns and talks with a laborious accent, and never for one second made me feel any kind of connection with the character. He just didn't seem emotionally invested at all. The screenplay makes an effort to humanize him and show a flawed but great man, but Freeman doesn't make that come across. I have to wonder whether Freeman was just wrong for the part of Nelson Mandela. Obviously (1) there are not many other high-profile American actors who could have played this part, (2) an American actor was necessary for publicity, and (3) Freeman and Clint Eastwood are friends, but it's still disappointing. Matt Damon, on the other hand, was great - he really sold the character's emotional arc. I see this as a low 3 star film.

I've also been looking through the free movies on my parents' cable system, and I've watched 13 Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus, and Black Caesar. The first two are entertaining William Castle fluff; I don't have much to say about them. Black Caesar was a fascinating rags to riches story with a tough sensibility. This was my first exposure to Fred Williamson, and I haven't been this electrified by an actor I knew nothing about since I saw Roger Livesey in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp a few years ago. I've seen one other Larry Cohen film, God Told Me To, and I'm impressed enough with the man that I'll look for more movies he directed.

I think so, too. As well as seeming very sophisticated, Connery has this roguish charm and conveys an underlying streak of brutality, which was perfect for "Marnie" and, arguably, makes him the best James Bond.



Hail 'Black Caesar', one of the best Blaxploitation films ever (and a gritty remake of the classic 30ies gangster movie 'Little Caesar'). I second Jonsh's praise of Fred Williamson's intense performance, but I would like to direct attention to the killer funk soundtrack by James Brown as well. It's even better than Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly' soundtrack.

I haven't seen that many Blaxploitation films (or Little Caesar for that matter), so I don't have the frame of reference to compare Black Caesar to other films. This is kind of how it felt when I saw Suspiria a few years ago - I knew nothing about Euro-horror or giallo films, so it blew me away. Then I saw other films that helped me put Suspiria in context. I like Suspiria better than Black Caesar, but I'm still curious to see more Blaxploitation films. What would you guys suggest I watch next? (BTW, I've seen Coffy and Blacula.)

I'd suggest the original Shaft, Superfly and, with reservations because it's a lesser Version of Coffy, Foxy Brown.