eucalyptus9 Reviews

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

Life of Moses

[1/10 · 2 May 2015]

Ah, I get it. Ridley Scott and Christian Bale got together and said, let's make a comedy about Moses. A kind of "Life of Moses" in similar vein to Monty Python's "Life of Brian". Well, it's not as funny as "Life of Brian", but probably funnier than a Seth Rogen or Adam Sandler movie. Like the Hebrew slaves (who are working double-shifts in their spare time) training to be warriors by learning to ride horses like Comanches and fire arrows into effigies of the Hebrew families being hanged by Ramses every day. Har! Har! What a hoot! Or the iron foundry being run by the slaves, with fire and smoke and hammers banging against steel, under the noses of Egyptian guards and Hebrew spies and whoever else passes by, but nobody has a clue! Crikey, cracked me up.

The sad thing is that in the face of the endless crap being produced by so many clowns, you hope that you can rely on folks like Scott and Bale for a bit of quality cinema. I didn't see "Noah" but heard it was awful, yet Darren Aronofsky and Russell Crowe have been responsible for a lot of good movies in the past 20 years. Same thing. Still, unless "Noah" had Seth Rogen or Adam Sandler in it, it couldn't have been worse than this load of tripe served up by Scott and Bale.

3 Days to Kill (2014)

Ridiculous, in a bad way

[2/10 · 6 July 2014]

The fact that a film is ludicrous doesn't necessarily mean that it will be bad. Take "Lockout" with Guy Pearce - utterly ridiculous, but funny and highly entertaining. "3 Days to Kill" is also utterly ridiculous, but its attempts at humour fall pretty flat, and eventually, getting to the end of it just becomes a tedious chore. The fact that Luc Besson's name is attached could help explain this, but then he also has a screenplay credit for "Lockout", so that can't be the only reason.

It's a pity to see a talent like Hailee Steinfeld being chewed up by this sort of dross. It's also sad to see quality actors like Kevin Costner and Connie Neilsen appearing in any old crap in order to make a buck, but I guess that's the trend - see Robert de Niro, Al Pacino, Liam Neeson, Tommy Lee Jones, Michelle Pfeiffer etc. etc. At least Neilsen mercifully missed most of it, by "going overseas on business". Good move.

If you've got "2 Hours to Kill", you'd be better off reading A Brief History of Knitting than wasting it watching this drivel.

The Family (I) (2013)

Witless garbage

[1/10 · 9 March 2014]

Another piece of crud from Robert De Niro and, increasingly, sadly, from Michelle Pfeiffer. This "comedy" is totally devoid of humour, completely lacking in morality (violence solves absolutely everything, and the more extreme the violence, the better - an outstanding lesson here for kids), and so ridiculous that it's offensive to the audience's intelligence. Well, maybe not the last one, judging from other comments on this page. Still, this witless piece of rubbish doesn't deserve to be seen, so why is Tommy Lee Jones in it? Are these guys this desperate to make a buck? Don't they have any pride? The fact that a film like this can be made, and then receive high marks from reviewers, is nothing but a sad example of society in decay.

Man of Steel (2013)

Entertaining but dumb

[4/10 · 26 January 2014]

I'd heard that "Man of Steel" was great. Wonderful. Marvellous. And I found it silly. Ludicrous. Dumb. Ah well, ain't it always the way.

Take the theme that gets espoused several times early in the movie, that Kal-El needs to keep his identity secret, because how would people react if they knew that there was an alien living amongst them? Well, the people are about to find out what happens when aliens live amongst them. First Smallville gets demolished, then the General and his crew move on to Clark's mother's house, which they proceed to similarly demolish. And what do we find Mrs Kent doing? Why, there she is in the ruins of her lounge room, thumbing through a photo album. As you do, after aliens have just chucked a truck through your roof.

Our warring aliens then move on to Metropolis, where they proceed to topple and destroy more buildings than Al-Qaida could achieve in a hundred years. Presumably whilst all this mayhem is taking place, human lives are being lost in droves, but this doesn't seem to bother Superman too much. On the other hand, having to give General Zod the deathly neck twist is the cue for tears and anguish and some cooing from Lois Lane. What's with the neck twist anyway? Here's an alien being who's just spent the last 30 minutes crashing into concrete and steel and glass at cataclysmic speeds, without a mark being left on him, but a deft little neck twist puts him out of business for good? Crikey, I'd have thought something a bit more imaginative than that would have been required.

The acting's generally OK - Michael Shannon is always good value - but the only disappointment for me was Russell Crowe. Now Crowe is one of my favourite actors. It's to the Academy's eternal shame that he didn't receive the Oscar for "A Beautiful Mind", and he should have received a lot more recognition for his brilliant performance in "The Next Three Days". But in this film, he looks and sounds as though someone's shoved a broom handle up his posterior. He has a naturally deep, resonant voice, so doesn't have to try to sound like Richard Burton. And a bit of animation would have been good, rather than floating around the set like someone who's just received a massive over-dose of Botox.

Funnily enough, it was all entertaining enough, just pretty stupid in the end.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

High on the revulsion and stupidity scale

[1/10 · 25 June 2013]

On the revulsion and stupidity scales, this film is on about a par with "The Human Centipede". From the revulsion perspective: I get irritated by people constantly whingeing and complaining about their rights - women's rights, men's rights, children's rights, elderly rights, indigenous rights, disabled rights, whales' rights. The list goes on. But even I have my limits. The violence against women in this film is plain revolting. Whether witches or not, the succession of women being punched, kicked, bashed, stabbed, shot, beheaded, threatened with rape and generally brutalised is just sinister and totally wrong.

The film-makers seem to have delighted in extremes. Watching actors pretend to vomit on screen doesn't usually concern me much, but when the young guy throws up towards the end, even that is repulsive.

And then there's the stupidity. During the blatantly obvious and pathetic setup for a sequel, the Hansel character says something like "they will know our powers. And know that we are coming to get them." Powers? What powers? Hansel and Gretel appear to be the most incompetent, powerless, clueless dorks roaming the landscape, who spend the entire film getting their asses kicked by whoever wants to kick them.

And don't even think about the guns.

Jeremy Renner was probably the only actor here with some claim to credibility, although "The Bourne Legacy" didn't do him any favours in that regard. But with this film, he seems to have set himself on the path to career destruction.

I give the film 1 star only because 0 stars doesn't seem to be an option. An excruciatingly bad film.

Margaret (I) (2011)

Another winner from Lonergan

[9/10 · 20 March 2013]

Margaret has 2 especially good things going for it. One is that it's written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, who did such a good job with You Can Count On Me. The latter had sharp, incisive, perceptive dialog which was at times laugh-out-loud funny. I didn't find myself laughing very often while viewing Margaret, but the dialog was just as sharp.

The other great thing in its favour is that it has Anna Paquin. I thought she was outstanding as the young child in The Piano, but haven't been over-impressed by anything I've seen her in since. Until Margaret, that is. The way she folds and involves the viewer into her exceedingly complex character was terrific, reminiscent of Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone.

The film itself is long, sometimes quite slow, but totally involving. I watched a couple of hours, thought I'd watch the rest the next night, then 10 minutes later turned it back on to watch the final hour. During most 90 minute films, I'm checking my watch to see how long there is to go, so this was a sure sign of how good a movie Margaret was.

I'm not sure I fully understand the movie. All of the characters are frail and their flaws easily come to the surface, which makes sympathizing with any of them too much somewhat difficult. But I guess that is the point - they're real people, like the rest of us. The child Curtis is probably the most sympathetic character. He's ignored by his mother, dismissed by his father, and seems to exist only as a source of irritation to Lisa. I guess that's a real situation too.

Margaret is a thought provoking film, that probably warrants a second viewing (all 3 hours of it - gulp) to pick up on its subtleties and nuances. I gave it 9/10.

Lockout (2012)

Totally ludicrous, totally enjoyable

[9/10 · 13 February 2013]

This is the most enjoyable movie I've seen in quite a while. Sure, it's totally ludicrous, leaving itself wide open to being picked to pieces, as so many po-faced commentators on the message boards are doing. But what movie isn't ludicrous - think Die Hard, Resident Evil, the Bourne series, Mission Impossible, The Dark Knight, and some of those take themselves so seriously they become risible. "Lockout" handles it all with a gratifying degree of good humor. In fact, I'm sure I laughed more in this movie than any of the so-called comedies I've viewed of late.

And what a revelation is Guy Pearce. Unlike his Antipodean colleagues - Crowe, Rush, Kidman, Watts, for whom every film, no matter how bad, represents a triumph in the acting stakes - Pearce's record is a bit more chequered. He's played nerds, cops, lawyers, magicians, cannibals, law-abiding citizens and crooks, and hasn't always been particularly good at it. But as the beefed-up macho man with the endless string of one-liners, he's just great, just excellent. Heck, I think he out-Willis-ed Bruce Willis. It seems like casting against type, but one of his most memorable roles, in my view, was as the hard-nosed Outback outlaw in "The Proposition", so maybe it works for him.

The others in the film don't really register that much. Maggie Grace is pretty, and enters into the good humor, but the acting in general isn't going to be nominated for anything good. But it doesn't matter. The film is funny, entertaining and action-packed. I give it 9/10, not because it's such a wonderful film, but because anything that I enjoyed this much deserves a decent rating.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Risible

[1/10 · 10 December 2012]

What is it about sequels? You get 3 excellent movies (Die Hard) followed by a 4th that's just awful, or 2 fair to middling movies (Mission Impossible) followed by a 3rd that's laughable. The Dark Knight faithfully follows the trend. While the first 2 movies were quite watchable, if not great, the third is just plain risible. It's summed up for me towards the end when, after it seems that the whole universe knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman, Commissioner Gordon, confidant to both Bruce and Batman, experiences an epiphany. "Wha...? Bruce?" As though to say, Who would have guessed? Well, everybody actually. At least, everybody with even a pinhead for a brain.

The various plot holes and laughable scenes and dialog have been well-covered, but I see that the film is still on Best Of 2012 lists, so what do I know? I watched Get the Gringo in the same week, and while that was also risible, at least it was intentionally so, and was reasonably entertaining. Better than The Dark Knight, anyway.

A Frozen Flower (2008)

Totally enjoyable

[20 October 2011]

I didn't think that a film about a homosexual king persuading his lover to sleep with the Queen to produce an heir would be very exciting. But as so often happens, it was. I've watched this twice now, and appreciated the film a lot more the second time around.

The lead characters are well drawn, the dialog is interesting, the acting is excellent - heck, I even liked the music. There's not an over-abundance of battle and fight scenes, but what scenes there were were well -staged, and I thought the final scenes were as good as anything I've seen.

And, of course, there's sex - lots of bare-bottomed bare-breasted, tongue in tongue, man on man, man on woman sex. But none of it descends into sleaziness and perhaps because Ji-hyo Song is such a beautiful woman (and, dare I say it, In-seong Jo is such a beautiful man) the scenes don't become tedious as they do in so many other other movies. The scenes are completely integral to the movie. Funnily enough, I've always thought of the French as being the only ones capable pf handling sex in cinema properly. The Germans and Spanish and Australians always tend towards crudity, the Americans invariably imbue their sex scenes with their childish puritanism, and sex in Asian cinema can be downright ludicrous. But having said that, the most erotic and interesting sex scenes I've seen have all been in Asian movies - "Samsara", "Erotic Ghost Story", "A Frozen Flower".

I really like this film - it gets a 9/10 from me.

The Next Three Days (2010)

Riveting viewing

[9/10 · 31 May 2011]

I'd heard disparaging comments about this film, some even comparing it unfavorably to shoddy movies like "Law Abiding Citizen". I watched it in anticipation of two potential flaws. One, it was long, about the two hour mark, and it's rare that a film can hold my attention for that long without a few peeks at my watch along the way. Secondly, American remakes of European films don't tend to work well - "Brothers" is a case in point, where the US movie wasn't all that bad, it just paled in every way with the Danish original.

But not this movie. It was clever, exciting, and kept the viewer's eyes riveted to the screen - no clock-watching here. I haven't seen "Pour Elle" the French original, but I doubt that it could be any better than this. Congratulations to director Paul Haggis.

There are several factors in favor of the film, predominant among these being that it has Russell Crowe. Crowe delivered a few ho-hum performances in some ho-hum films - "American Gangster" for instance - but seems to have found his mojo again. He was good in "3:10 to Yuma", excellent in "State of Play", I liked his "Robin Hood", and in this he's just outstandingly good, clearly stamping him as the most charismatic male actor on screen today. There's a remarkably strong performance from Elizabeth Banks as well.

The plot is well-written and clever, with some devious moments. It's all implausible, of course, but not stupidly implausible to the extent of, say, "Law Abiding Citizen" or "Taken". The dialog is smart and snappy with occasional vignettes of humor (John, talking to his son Luke about a fight at school: "Where did you hit him?" Luke: "On the playground". John: "Oh. That must've hurt.") I liked the allusion to Don Quixote, with the parallels between John and the Don, each living in his fantasy world which he convinces himself is, or can be, reality.

The cinematography and editing is similarly excellent. I don't usually notice such esoteric features, but there were some outstanding scenes such as John pursuing the drug dealer in his car. The camera pans to a closeup of John, then to the windscreen and to John's point of view. Then back to John, then back again to his POV and a completely new image. Back to John, then back to another new image. It might be simple, but it was highly effective.

I really enjoyed this film. The implausible nature of the movie would probably have limited it to 8/10, but Crowe is so good I give it 9.

Winter's Bone (2010)

Scarier than a horror movie

[9/10 · 19 May 2011]

This is a brilliant film, one that's stayed with me for days after viewing it. It's a remarkable depiction of another way of life.

Not long ago, I spent some weeks touring Tasmania, an Australian island State surrounded by the Tasman Sea and Southern Ocean. Tasmania is wild and rugged, and incredibly naturally beautiful, but has a brutal history and a strange, eerie, atmosphere. I drove through towns in the middle of nowhere with landscape, buildings and people not far removed from those in this film. I sometimes wound up in cabins, lonely roads, bush tracks, or just the wrong place by mistake, which could be plain unsettling.

I've seen similar places in North Carolina and Virginia. So I felt as though I had an immediate affinity with the locations and atmosphere of this film. The story turned out to be pretty good too, allowed to unfold slowly and subtly. The same with the characters, who revealed themselves slowly, but with a hint of greater depths and subtleties still hidden. The acting is universally superb, far superior to most of what I've seen of late (with the exception of Naomi Watts in Fair Game. Or the cast of The King's Speech). John Hawkes is terrific as Teardrop. He's not a naturally imposing character, but still conveys a sense of menace and toughness.

But it's Jennifer Lawrence's film. Talk about inhabiting a role - every look, every movement, every gesture, convinces you that this IS Ree Dolly. In fact, right from the start, I pretty much forgot I was looking at actors. These people, with their dialog, their look, their stillness, seem as real as it gets, and that can be pretty scary. With Lawrence's superlative portrayal leading the way, this was a riveting movie to watch.

The contribution of the cinematography, film coloring and choice of locations shouldn't be overlooked either, in lending the air of realism that the film contained. One of the best I've seen of late - definitely a 9.

Tulpan (2008)

fascinating and inspiring

[9/10 · 12 December 2010]

One of the reasons I like to watch movies from around the world is too observe the different locations, be they city or country. A while back I watched "Tony Manero", shot in Santiago Chile, in which the city setting was about the most desolate and depressing locale I've ever seen. The setting in Tulpan is certainly desolate, but it's not depressing. Having lived part of my younger life in places like that, it's almost uplifting.

As are the cast. Samal Esljamova is one of the beautiful women I've ever seen. The kids are delightful - Maha the singer, Beke the news reciter, the little one who seems to enjoy taunting and annoying Beke. Beke seems to be the only one aware of the camera - I had the feeling that if the camera wasn't there, the little one might have received a few clips across the ear-hole.

Boni is funny, and the episode with the vet is fascinating. I wasn't sure how scared of the mother camel the cast really were, but it certainly seemed real enough. The little touches were done so well - the relationship between Tulpan's parents for instance - the stoic mother, the father trying to exert his authority and being studiously ignored.

And then comes the climactic scene, the birth of the lamb. Both this, and the previous scene in which Ondas attempts to revive a dying lamb, were just riveting to watch. For sure, the actor playing Asa didn't look too excited by it all, but the realism couldn't be faulted.

I thought this was a great film, a film showing that despite the differences in how we live, we all share the same burdens and joys and ambitions.

Accidents Happen (2009)

Dodgy

[3/10 · 16 September 2010]

Dodgy is the word that comes to mind when thinking about this movie. There's some dodgy acting to the point of amateurism, particularly in scenes between Doug and Billy. Although perhaps it wasn't entirely the actors' fault. Maybe it was dodgy scene setup, dodgy directing, dodgy dialog. Even Geena Davis looked a bit non-plussed at times.

Then there's the dodgy basic premise of the movie. It's called "Accidents Happen" but, as noted elsewhere, most of the incidents that happen to this family are the result of their own rank stupidity.

The dodgiest scenes occur towards the end of the film. Mrs Conway lies to the police, forces one of her sons to lie, and compels the complicity of her other son, his friend and his family. So Mrs Post mouths "Thank you" to Mrs Conway during the bingo game. Why exactly? Her son didn't steal the bowling ball, or fire it off down the road to cause her husband to swerve and die, so he's not going to jail. All that Mrs Conway's lie has done is rob her of her husband's insurance money. And she's saying Thank You?

But the grossest scene of irresponsibility and outrageous stupidity is yet to come. Billy decides, with the encouragement of his frail neighbour who has hidden the bowling ball although she looks as though she could barely lift it, to once more send it on its way down a public thoroughfare. So off it goes, winding its way till it ends up in a culvert, from where it comes crashing like a cannonball out onto a public road, to cause whatever unpredictable mayhem. Perhaps this time it could have smashed into a car containing a family returning from a day at the beach and killed them all. Crikey, that would have been hilarious. Instead, it crashes into the police car, which is presumably meant to be funny. What are Billy and his mother going to do when the police come calling? Lie again? Hopefully, the cops will dust it for finger prints and put Billy and the rest of his family in jail where they all belong. Now, THAT would be funny.

Brothers (I) (2009)

Spoiled by the ending

[5/10 · 15 July 2010]

I watched the original Danish version of this film some time ago. Connie Neilsen was stunning as the wife, Nikolas Lie Kaaj was good as the brother, and Ulrich Thomsen fitted the role of the Captain like a glove - mature, grave and, upon his return, with a sense of foreboding. In this remake, Natalie Portman is superb, while Jake Gyllenhaal, Sam Shepard and the 2 kids are all excellent. But Tobey Maguire is no Ulrich Thomsen. It's not that he's a bad actor, it's just that casting him as Captain Cahill of the Marines was akin to picking Russell Crowe to play Rudolph Nureyev in the film version of "Swan Lake".

The other aspect in which seeing the Danish version first somewhat spoiled the remake was that a number of scenes were changed, some in only minor ways, but none for the better - the killing, the rescue, the post-rescue de-briefing and counselling (omitted here), the visit of the Captain to the private's wife and son. Most of all, in the Danish film, the whole movie was geared towards the revelations at the end, and when they came, they were emotional and powerful. In this film, it seems as though the producers ran out of time, or out of money, or out of interest. "I killed him." That's it. The End. Major disappointment.

Pity, because it was quite a good story and quite a good film. I'd have given it 7, but that ending dumped it down to 5.

In the Loop (2009)

Funny? Nah.

[3/10 · 8 July 2010]

British humour used to leave me in stitches. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, the Pythons, the Goodies, Marty Feldman - I loved them all. So what happened? Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and friends are as funny as a fart at the opera, "The Boat That Rocked", "Lesbian Vampire Killers", "Death at a Funeral" et al were only mildly funnier than "Schindlers List", and now we have "In The Loop", supposedly "the funniest British comedy in decades." Well, that could be right, but it doesn't mean that it's funny. Occasionally, my lips twitched in anticipation of impending mirth, but they soon reverted to a thin, grim line as the opportunity passed.

Not that US humour fares any better. Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Jason Segel, Seth Rogen are all pretty well unwatchable (although "Observe and Report" was a pleasant surprise). The last belly laughs I got from a movie were from the Sandra Bullock vehicles "Miss Congeniality" and "The Proposal". Probably the last half-decent British comedy I saw was "Love Actually". Well, no, it was actually the brilliant movie "Sixty-Six" although that was a bit more than a comedy.

So "In The Loop" just struck me as a foul-mouthed, unfunny attempt to take deep and satirical digs at politics and politicians which failed miserably. The Kirsten Dunst/Michelle Williams take on Watergate, "Dick", was a funnier, more subtle and more perceptive movie than this.

Maybe it's me - the definition of what's funny has changed, and it passed me by. Maybe I'll just go back to watching Leni Reifenstahl documentaries or something.

Edge of Darkness (2010)

It's Mel's movie, and he's pretty good

[7/10 · 6 July 2010]

I prefer Mel Gibson the director to Mel Gibson the actor, although he made a pretty good fist of both in "BraveHeart". It seems that, now the youthful good looks have faded, then it's roles like this that suit his craggy, lived-in face and the macho persona. Since it's almost exclusively Mel's movie, he needs to be good in it. And he is.

Whereas Danny Huston was a disappointment. From the bewildered suitor of "Birth" to the savage outlaw of "The Proposition" to the vampire leader of "30 Days of Night", he's been consistently watchable. But in this, his mannered, if brief, performance seems distracted, as though he's not really interested. Maybe he wanted a bigger part, but no-one besides Mel got one of those.

Bojana Novakovic brings an ethereal beauty to the screen. I'd only seen her occasionally in the Australian series "Satisfaction", in which she plays a high-class prostitute. The series seemed pretty tedious, so I only ever caught snatches of it, but whenever she was on-screen, things seemed to lift a little.

As for the film itself, apparently it's not as good as the TV series, but it moved along with verve. There's some heart-warming stuff between Mel and his child, some snappy dialogue between him and Ray Winstone, and I think I even laughed once. It's a pretty simple story about baddies at various levels of corporate and government life, not too convoluted or difficult to follow. I did like the scene at the end, in which Ray Winstone spares the life of the young cop, only to find that his generosity does not receive the appreciation it deserves.

Overall, an enjoyable if not great movie. 7/10

The Lovely Bones (2009)

Vastly superior to the book

[9/10 · 19 April 2010]

I'd heard the acclaim for the novel "The Lovely Bones" so got a hold of the book and found the first few chapters interesting and original. Before long, though, it descended into a tedious, boring narrative that eventually had me turning to the end of the book, to find one of the lamest endings to a story I'd encountered.

Somehow, out of this tedium Peter Jackson has fashioned a fascinating and beautiful film. The beauty seems to come from his own visionary qualities - many of the scenes of the after life hark back to the imaginative settings he created for his early feature "Heavenly Creatures'. He's removed some of the novel's subplots - the changing dynamics of the Salmon family with their community, and the affair between Len and Abigail, although the latter gets the merest hint, when Jack is thanking Len for his friendship, and adds, meaningfully "And thanks for being such a good friend to Abigail." Subtle. The film had a PG-13 rating in the US and so the rape of Susie is glossed over, but the way that Jackson conveys the horror of her murder, without melodrama and explicitness, is remarkably well done.

The cast are universally good. Mark Wahlberg, who was the best thing about "The Departed", seems to have since embarked upon a series of shonky performances in atrociously bad films, but in this, he is again excellent. Susan Sarandon has an hilariously funny scene, and Saoirse Ronan is brilliant. She's not a classic screen beauty, but when her erstwhile boyfriend Ray says to her "You are beautiful, Susie Salmon", you can't help but agree. I guess that Stanloy Tucci gets the major kudos. He's unrecognisable at first, and his sinister predator is as much a landmark villain as Anthony Hopkins made of Hannibal Lecter.

Like Mel Gibson, Jackson's hand as director is evident in all his films. His major flaw is a tendency to go on too damn long - The Return of the King, King Kong - and I thought this movie was heading in the same direction, but he's restrained himself here. Jackson has created a good body of work - Meet The Feebles is always worth another look - but I think that this is his finest film. 9/10

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Perceptively accurate portrayals

[9/10 · 4 March 2010]

I don't understand the negative reviews and comments I see on IMDb regarding this movie. I've watched it twice and I'd willingly see it again.

The acting is the one aspect that seems to win universal approval, and deservedly so, particularly that of Anne Hathaway. But I think it's the writer who deserves the most kudos. What I found most startling about the film was the accuracy with which it portrayed the self-absorption of drug addicts. Anybody with one in the family will recognize the symptoms on display here. More particularly, it's a feature that can be exacerbated by stints in rehab. Not that I'm decrying rehab in any way, but the intense focus in these sessions on "self" tends to produce even more self-obsessed people. Which can be a bit hard for others to take, as superbly demonstrated by Hathaway in this movie.

The other character I was fascinated with was the mother/mother-in-law portrayed by Debra Winger. This character was a dead-ringer for someone I know only too well - wanting to keep the oar in, but strictly from a distance, with plenty of ready escape routes at hand. The writer of these characters should be congratulated.

I guess the one beef I might have is why American parents in films such as this always seem to be so well off. It was the one redeeming feature of Jack Nicholson's "About Schmidt", that for once neither set of parents was exactly rolling in cash.

Overall, a fine film, one of the best I've seen.

The Open Road (2009)

Bland, boring

[5/10 · 21 November 2009]

This movie didn't do much for me. It's the story of another dysfunctional family, without much happening to make the family very interesting. I guess the theme is that no matter how rotten your Dad is, he's still your Dad, and can be loved and forgiven. I suppose that's true enough, as long as there are some good memories to outweigh the bad. But the Dad in this movie doesn't seem to have left too many good memories behind.

I like Jeff Bridges on screen. He's made some very good movies ("Fearless" for instance), and some that didn't impress me much ("The Contender", "Sea Biscuit", "The Fisher King"), but no matter the quality of the film, he always seems to rise above the material. In this movie, he plays such a rotten piece of work - a self-centred, boozy, sleazy, loud-mouthed jock living in the past - that I started to see the less redeeming features of Bridges himself. Maybe that just proves what a good job he did.

Justin Timberlake is OK, but he doesn't inject much life into his character. What the lovely Lucy (the totally gorgeous Kate Mara) sees in this sour, sulky, colourless character is beyond me. With her knowing grin, a flash of the eyes, a shake of the head, she makes it obvious that she understands this lot only too clearly. I felt like shouting "Run, Lucy, run! Don't get mixed up with these screw-ups! You can do better! Much better!" I could have added, but didn't, "Pick me!"

Basically, I found the film bland and un-involving. I gave it 5/10, and every one of the 5 points derives from the presence of Mara, who brings not just loveliness to the screen, but there's a fire in her eyes and a sense of personality that few others are capable of projecting.

Disgrace (2008)

Needed a lift

[6/10 · 20 October 2009]

John Malkovich. He's one of those actors you can hate one day and love the next. In Luc Besson's "Joan of Arc", Malkovich was terrific as the spoiled, under-handed Dauphin, but in "Ripley's Game" I found him just annoying.

At first, I thought that his mannerisms would do the same to me in this film, just annoy the hell out of me. How could a person this unattractive be a serial womanizer? But then you realize how perfect he is for the role. Driven by desire, limited in his accomplishments, he can't keep a wife, his regular prostitute rejects him when he starts to get too close, and his student submits to his advances only passively. (Although why she does that doesn't get explained in either the book or the movie. For good marks, perhaps? No, I think that would conflict with her other statements regarding the professor's course and her attendance at it.)

J.M.Coetzee doesn't appeal to me much either. The acclaimed "Elizabeth Costello" was plot-less, character-less and its monologues were of only limited interest. "Disgrace" was a much better book, I think, well-plotted, well thought out, and with well-drawn characters. In fact, I thought it was better than the film. It's a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall the professor's affair consuming perhaps the first third of the book, his arrival at the Cape and immersion into his daughter's life perhaps another third, then comes the attack and its consequences. The movie seems to skip as quickly as possible to the attack, then follows a somewhat boring set of post-attack psychological musings, with very little activity of any interest. Lucy spends a lot of time lying down and staring off into space, while David does some wandering about, some work at the clinic, passes the odd cryptic remark to Petrus, and makes some very sexless love to Bev.

The book, and the film, make some cogent and brave comments upon the state of South Africa, and the film, to be fair, tries to convey those points. But where the book could get away with being bland and boring in parts, the movie needed to excise those bits and keep its momentum. I think that it failed in that regard.

Martyrs (2008)

The effects of stressful extremes on the right side of the brain

[8/10 · 2 October 2009]

Wow. This is a full-on movie. I needed to turn it off for 10 minutes about midway and take a rest.

Which is more than poor Anna could expect. I'm not a fan of gorefests - "Feast" was watchable because it was funny, whereas "Feast II" was remarkably unfunny and repulsive, while films like "Captivity" don't usually last more than about 20 minutes before the STOP button gets pushed.

But "Martyrs" is a good film, with good actors and a good story. The thesis is that if a person can survive extremes of pain and deprivation, new vistas may be opened to them. It's been long-held that the right side of the brain, the imaginative, creative side, receives its flashes of insight or inspiration under extremes of stress. It's why the Jains, whose senior members live in a permanently deprived state, close to starvation, are renowned for performing significant deeds (e.g. bringing people back from the dead).

It may be that there's some truth in the theory. Whatever the case, it's a topic worth exploring, and "Martyrs" does a pretty good job of it. While the brutality was hard to watch, the underlying theme rendered it all fascinating, unlike so many pointless torture pics that probably do untold harm to impressionable minds.

An 8/10.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

An insightful movie on inhumanity

[8/10 · 2 September 2009]

This week, I sat through 3 films centred on the Nazis and Jews during WWII - "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas", "Defiance" and "Good". Of the 3, this is by far the superior movie. "Good" just wasn't very good. "Defiance" suffered from being overlong, of dubious historical accuracy, and from a typical Edward Zwick Boys' Own Adventure ending, a throwback to the old Cowboys and Indians battles with the cavalry riding to the rescue.

"The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas", on the other hand, contained a gut-wrenching, powerful ending. The film provided insight into the psychology of Nazi concentration camp commanders. To Bruno's Dad, the Jews are "not really people" (in "Good", they're called "items"). Like a factory manager, he pores over plans to expand the gas chambers and "triple the throughput". I've read of Nazis at the train stations, separating families, tearing children from their parents, regarding the beings under their control as simply animals.

It's a typical protective psychological response, apparently. Battles in the Pacific were more vicious and caused proportionately greater casualties, because the Americans and Japanese each convinced themselves that their enemy was some kind of sub-human species and should be obliterated from the face of the earth.

Executioners and abattoir slaughtermen use the same mechanism, concentrating on the process of disposal, upon the technicalities of the job, rather than on the fact of the living being that they are dealing with, who will soon no longer be living.

Only at the end does the horror and suffering and inhumanity of the gas chambers strike home to Bruno's father. The film's been criticised for not tying up all the loose ends, but I think it's irrelevant. Will the Dad strike out at the Jews in revenge? Will he throw over the job and end up in a shallow grave with the rest of his family? It doesn't matter. The film's point has been made, extremely well in my opinion. The ease with which the kids can conduct their relationship may stretch the bounds of credibility, but the basic premise is a good one, and the acting is terrific. An 8/10.

T.K.O. (2007)

Not The Worst Movie Ever. But Close

[2/10 · 5 May 2009]

I'd like to be able to say that this is the worst movie I've ever seen, but I can't because, somehow, I watched it till the bitter end. There's plenty of films (Taxi, Amelie, Closer and a host of lesser known movies) where I called it quits well before the conclusion.

The story of TKO is ridiculous, of course, with heavy borrowings from Van Damme's "Kickboxer". At least that movie made an attempt to stay within the bounds of credibility. This film doesn't bother with such constraints. The acting is universally appalling, but special mention goes to Samantha Alarcon, playing Skyler. This person should never again be allowed on celluloid. In fact, she should never again be allowed to open her mouth. I guess that's a feat of a kind, to stand out in a movie where the acting is this bad. Dianna Agron was kind of cute though.

The other thing is - why call it TKO? Technical Knock Out doesn't seem to quite apply to fights where "You win. Or you die". Maybe it stands for something else. "Total Krap. Orright?" It gets 2/10 - 1 because I made it to the end, 1 for Agron.

The Jammed (2007)

Another surprisingly good Aussie movie

[8/10 · 3 March 2009]

I didn't have much desire to see this. An Aussie-made movie about a sleazy subject? It was sure to be as grubby, repulsive and amateurish as possible. But David Stratton's strong recommendation led me to give the DVD a spin.

I'm glad I did. Dee McLachlan has produced a gripping film with commendable restraint. It's a low budget film but has a professional touch about it. The only qualm I had was why Emma Lung was nominated as lead actress. The main character seemed to me to be Ashley, played by Veronica Sywak. Sywak was also in Romulus My Father, apparently, although I don't remember her. Which is surprising, since in this film she's both startlingly attractive and startlingly good at capturing her character. Ashley has a lousy job, which appears to consist of finding reasons to turn down insurance claims. Not much room for compassion there. Yet when she's placed in circumstances in which she really doesn't want to get involved, it's conscience and compassion that drive her to do just one more thing to help, then another and another.

I also liked Saskia Burmeister's Vanya, the feisty Russian who's secretly one step ahead of the game.

The film has a bit to say about Australian immigration policies and its bureaucrats, and a lot to say about the state of Australian cities and the people who populate them. As one character says, "Melbourne is a dangerous city." These days, where isn't?

The only false note, for me, occurred towards the end, during the rescue of Vanya. Ashley has been progressively becoming more daring and innovative but this seemed a step too far, out of reality and into the realms of movie fantasy. Still, one false note in a pretty good film can be forgiven.

I thought "The Jammed" was an excellent achievement - 8/10

The Savages (2007)

Watchable enough, but could have hit harder.

[6/10 · 9 December 2008]

After all the 5 star reviews, I found this movie disappointing, on two counts. Firstly, the story just wasn't very interesting. The attempt to liven it up with subplots didn't succeed, and I found it boring and tedious. Secondly, as an effort in portraying the problems inherent in dealing with an aged parent for whom home-care is not possible and for whom encroaching dementia renders them difficult to deal with, this was a pretty lame, over-glossed attempt. The story of my mother-in-law would have been a much more realistic and dramatically interesting tale - firstly driving her old husband to kill himself, then throwing up every barrier possible to her family's attempts to get the vindictive old cow into first, a retirement village where the neighbours eventually ganged together to force her out, then into a nursing home with all the attendant machinations and rip-offs that can accompany such endeavours.

Not that the film was all bad. Anything with Laura Linney is worth watching, and while I'm more ambivalent about Hoffman, he was brilliant in "Charlie Wilson's War" and he's good in this. His comment on all nursing homes being houses of horrors was perceptively true, given our own experiences.

An OK movie that could have been a lot more riveting and hard-hitting - a 6/10.