Ranked #222 on the IMDB top-250. I can see the genesis of Natural Born Killers here but not much more. Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman... they're better elsewhere.
General Buck Turgidson survived the Strangelove nuclear holocaust to lead the U.S. Third Army to a loud but fairly bloodless victory over the Nazis in World War II. Francis Ford Coppola was one of the writers, and there are elements of Godfather bombast, pomp and ceremony here. At almost three hours, it is gripping in a is-anything-going-to-happen sort of way, and I guess that's enough of a reason for it to be #225 in IMDB's top-250.
I found it vaguely amusing that this aggrandising propaganda, of the omlette-making variety, was made in the late 1960s when the American people's support for the war in Vietnam was seriously flagging. Patton's logic of continuing from Berlin to Moscow is impeccable: we're going to have to fight them anyway, so let's do it while we've got the army there...
Classic coming-of-age, parked at #161 in IMDB's top-250. The acting is very good, the narrative arc all-American. I can't believe it's based on a Stephen King novel.
A millenial hellraiser from Polanski. I expected a lot more from him and his cast — Lena Olin, Johnny Depp, Frank Langella... how could it be this empty? It is robbed of any suspense by the trivial pattern amongst the texts, the deus ex girl appearing just when she needed to, and a total failure to innovate on the stereotypes of the occult. I am sure fans of this type of junk have pored it over and discovered all sorts of symbols and references, deeper meanings and bullshit, but I think the ending nailed it: hollow and two hours too long.
Yes, I feel ripped off. More so now that I find that Polanski wasn't taking it very seriously either. Sheesh, why make this tripe when you can do so much better?
A Pacino and Pfeiffer rom with some com in New York City. I have no idea why he signed up for this one: his character is unusually soft headed and there's no chance for any kind of glory. Pfeiffer tries hard to be a lower-class waitress but is too beautiful to credit with any of this stuff. Perhaps her gay BFF was innovative in 1991, now it just seems tired.
I found it funny in a ludicrous kind of way.
I've read way too many reviews while waiting for the incredibly-late Australian release of Polanski's latest effort. I liked The Pianist and Chinatown, though I can't remember much about either. I spent my birthday freebie at the Verona, the 9pm session.
I guess this is an attempt at a classical political thriller, ala Chinatown or All the President's Men, but it only really succeeded in reminding me of how dire the new movie scene has been for so many years. It was good to see Rents out and about, with David Tennant hair, and it was a relief that he got the majority of the screen time. Kim Cattrall is indeed quite flat, and Brosnan is miscast; he never relaxes into the role. The plot unfolds in a revelatory way, but never really makes us care, for conspiracy theories are the currency of Dan Brown novels. Perhaps they need to be local, ala Chinatown, to be worth thinking through, or incredible but rooted in fact ala the Nixon escapades. At least the editing and cinemotography are coherent, though I couldn't call it beautiful.
Reviews: Dana Stevens, Sandra Hall.
Pacino flogs real estate with Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey. It's not bad but it doesn't really go anywhere. Mamet wrote the play and the movie is therefore dialogue-heavy.
An early Al Pacino, from 1971. Bleak, fairly soulless, a not-at-all Trainspotting take on a completely insular heroin scene in New York. The movie provides no reason for people to do drugs; simply they are addicts and have no moral fibre. It is a product of its time, I guess. Pacino is OK playing a low-grade shell of a hustler. His next role was Michael Corleone.
Better than I expected, and deservedly at #237 on IMDB's top-250. The whole thing is held together by Olive, which allows the adults to get on with being stupid and funny. Perhaps they were the family Muriel grew up to have. Toni Collette is solid, as is Steve Carell.
I last saw this somewhere between 2003 and 2005, I think, as I remember buying the 20th anniversary edition DVD in Sweden. This is solid 8-bit movie making, with a workman-like plot that is thankfully unobtrusive. The aesthetic remains awesome, being in some ways the internal flipside of Bladerunner's, and there is just the hint of the Dude in Jeff Bridges' performance.
I can't wait to see how they butcher the sequel.
A young Mel Gibson goes to Indonesia in 1965 and gets the girl (Sigourney Weaver in this instance). He is so wooden, perhaps yet to slip out of Mad Max mode, and she so girlishly giggly that the romance is totally implausible. The focus is certainly on the Westerners, mostly boorish colonialists, the Indonesians being there just for colour.
With no knowledge of the history, I learnt little here and had some difficulty following what looked to be the big plot points. Peter Weir may be taking an anti-colonial stand (in 1982?), but it has been done better elsewhere. Linda Hunt got an Oscar for her portrayal of the mysterious photographer Billy Kwan.
I saw this at the Verona when it was released in 1999, and apart from Rose Byrne, remember not much else about it. Ledger cuts a swathe through the high-profile Australian actors of the day: Bryan Brown is third-rate playing a gangster and this isn't even his best or final effort at it. Tom Long is typically flat, and David Field so transparently posturing. It tries to keep too many balls in the air, and pulls up empty. Perhaps its legacy is as a launchpad for Ledger, and a platform for Powderfinger's biggest hit.
#191 in the IMDB top-250. I didn't get into it at all; too much is telegraphed, the characters are lame, and I'm not a fan of any of the actors. The much vaunted subtlety and totally artificial morality left me cold.
Pacino, Hilary Swank, Martin Donovan... directed by Christopher Nolan, set in Alaska. Somehow this is less than the sum of its parts, even though everyone is trying hard. I think I prefer Pacino when he's pretending to be from New York; he seems out of place here as a west coast cop.
Pacino is the pseudo-romantic lead in this cop-thriller, which is wedged somewhere between 9 1/2 weeks and Basic Instinct, right down to the Joe Cocker rendition of the eponymous song; nothing growls 1980s in quite the same way. John Goodman has the best part.
It isn't bad — the suspense is handled well — but it isn't that great either.
Knowing, slickly produced, director Michael Vaughn has clearly been studying Fight Club closely since his much less interesting Layer Cake (circa 2005). The climax would not be out of place in any of Arnie's classics, but the unflinching brutality is. Nick Cage is minor in his supporting role, and quite OK at it, but the real stars are so obviously the kids, whose patois would be familiar (but surprising) to any geek of the 1990s. Somehow this reminded me of Brick, a revival of an old genres via youth.
This is certainly the action movie of the year, worthy of its 8.2 rating on IMDB and position at #167 on the top-250. There will be sequels... if you can't innovate, renovate, I guess.
Better than the first one. At #228 in the IMDB top-250.
Wow, I am slow to see this one, 15 years after it made such a splash for Pixar. It is parked at #149 in IMDB's top-250, understandably enough. I liked the two-track humour, but was hoping for more of the adult track to be integrated with the story, as I remember it being in Shrek. The whole thing felt a bit twee, to be honest.
I saw this 1979 Pacino vehicle a long time ago, probably on video tape. It's a fun but not particularly subtle or plausible drama set around the courts of Baltimore, or perhaps a subtle comedy saddled with excessive melodrama and obliviousness. Pacino here is just slightly smaller than the movie, and this might be one of his last efforts where he tries to do more than just channel his inner-Al, enjoyable though that often is.
A seriously mediocre political thriller. Pacino phones it in, and Cusak is yet to hit his High Fidelity straps. The requisite romance subplot is a fizzer.
