Category Archives: film review

The Savages

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Just what I needed after Tarantino: a real story with real people and something of a message, although I’ll need to ponder it further to work out exactly what was being said. Excellent. 4.5/5

Inglorious Basterds

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Hmm. I want to do one of those graphs that you can occasionally find in movie magazines that track your interest during the course of the film: an excellently dramatic, verging on the profound, opening chapter, then a disconcertingly zig-zagging subsequent experience as it lurched from pathos to pathetic cartoonery, via pointless bloodthirstiness, until it abandoned all pretence at being a serious film at the conclusion. Still, I guess that was Tarantino’s intention, he’s still basically a geek playing with his new Millenium Falcon. Thing is, I caught a discussion of his on ‘There Will Be Blood’ the other night, and how Paul Anderson had made him try to raise his game. Despite the film’s last line, he’s failed on that score; the first scene above all shows that he has the technique mastered, what’s missing is something else, perhaps something more soulful. He’s managed it with some films (Pulp Fiction has it) but he seems to be making more misses than hits these days.
Oh, should have said: some excellent acting in it, and memorable characters.
3.5/5

Psycho (Gus van Sant)

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Wasn’t planning to watch this, but caught the Tarantino introduction that Sky Movies prefaced it with, and found it (with QT’s help) surprisingly watchable. One day, in a different lifetime, it would be interesting to study the differences and the choices that van Sant made. 3/5

Angel-A

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Fabulous, wonderful and a new contender for one of my top ten films. It would have been perfect without the last 90 seconds or so, which I feel spoiled it a little. It would be interesting to read an analysis of this film as compared with It’s a Wonderful Life (which IS one of my all-time favourites), especially the shift from a more social sense of worth to the contemporary psychological/self-help sense of worth. If I can’t find the article I might end up writing it myself!

Four and three-quarters out of five.

On missing John Hughes

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I must have seen Breakfast Club more than thirty times when I was a teenager. I even bought the soundtrack album (which I still have somewhere). That might qualify as too much information 🙂

“Their deaths make me feel old, but more than that, they make me aware of belonging to a generation that has yet to figure out adulthood, for whom life can feel like a long John Hughes movie. You know the one. That Spandau Ballet song is playing at the big dance. You remember the lyrics, even if it’s been years since you heard them last. This is the sound of my soul. I bought a ticket to the world, but now I’ve come back again. Why do I find it hard to write the next line?”

Lots of other things around, like this one.