peteg | blog 2006-06-08.autumn

The Constant Gardener

The Black Dahlia

Hillary Swank enjoys herself mightily in this attempt at 40s noir. Everyone else seems to be labouring. (I think Brick was more successful at imitating the genre.)

Independence Day (1996)

An astonishingly bad movie. The moral clarity and ineffective security (and so on and so forth) seem so familiar in these post-911 times that it's like the TV news. I'm glad that Apple has improved the styling of their PowerBooks since the mid-90s and retained the ability to communicate with alien spacecraft.

Roger Ebert: two-and-a-half stars. Janet Maslin. That doesn't sound like the movie I saw.

A Scanner Darkly

At the Verona with Jen. An improvement on his earlier Waking Life, in the same style.

Nashville

Altman.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

At the Verona, with Jen. A freebie from Hopscotch via The Program. A fairy tale for adults, who would have thought. Beautiful, but the violence was a bit too graphic for me.

I tried to make some sense of it through the prism of Franco's Fascists versus the insurgents / freedom fighters / communists / concerned citizens but my history is a bit weak. I think the ending is supposed to imply Spain's reinstatement of the monarchy was broadly welcomed. Doubtlessly there were other allegories that I missed.

Roger Ebert: four stars.

The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover

Another Helen Mirren vehicle. If only they'd spent what they saved on the sets on the script.

Casino Royale

At Fox Studios with Jen. I bet her a coffee there'd be at least five mobiles go off during this distended action poker romance, only to realise that it had been perfectly crafted for these audiences: loud and cheesy. One could, and probably needed to, hold a conversation through most of it without disturbing a soul.

Shortbus

At the Academy Twin.

Age of Consent

Finally got around to watching this film based on an old Norman Lindsay story.

Borat

Manderlay

A freebie courtesy of the Darlinghurst Theatre, at the Dendy Opera Quays with Jen. In the style of Dogville, sans Nicole Kidman.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

The songs are great but the performances tend not to be. It's a shame they didn't just make a straight documentary on the big man. There are plenty of thoughtful comments at IMDB.

The Prestige

At The Ritz.

Napoleon Dynamite

A sort-of halfway house to Todd Solondz's excruciating oeuvre (specifically, Welcome to the Dollhouse).

Who Killed the Electric Car?

With Rob at the Verona.

The Zero Effect

On Dave's recommendation.

Lucky Number Slevin (The Wrong Man)

Late afternoon screening at The Ritz with Jen.

Flags of our Fathers

I didn't know the story of the iconic American flag-raising photograph, so I found it riveting. Jock Alexander drew an apposite counterpoint back in 2004.

Suburban Mayhem.

At the Verona. I also signed up for their movie club: it costs <$12 /> for a student, you get two free tickets per annum and the ticket price drops to an unbelievable <$8 />.50 for oneself and one's friend. I'll make that money back in a month.

Children of Men

At the Greater Union at Bondi Junction Westfield with Jen.

Soylent Green.

A Prairie Home Companion at the Orpheum.

Ah, dear old Mr Blue wrote a movie. His schtick is timeless. It's a bit trying if you like a strong plot or dislike bumpkin-ism. Directed by Robert Altman, and his last.

The Departed

Very well edited but the plot is a bit paint-by-the-numbers.

Blade Runner

Yep, I feel like some cyberpunk right now. The plot makes little sense. (e.g. How could Deckard not know that replicants have a limited life span? — surely if there was blood spilt on Earth over these things then the resolution would have been broadcast to reassure the citizenry.) Heck, we're not watching it for the plot though, are we? It's all about noir in a dyspeptic future.

For A Few Dollars More

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

At the Greater Union at Westfield Bondi Junction. Quite enjoyable. The first half or so was a lot less fluidly edited than the latter half.

A Fistful of Dollars

Kenny

The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

Thank You for Smoking

At the Village Jam Factory in South Yarra. I liked the (cough) moral flexibility, but I think it would have worked better as a mockumentary — the narrative arc got a bit irritating at times, and most of the funny bits had already made it into the shorts.

Team America

Wow, what a masterpiece. A guest-pacifier at Peodair, Tim and Marilyne's place in North Carlton.

Brick (2005)

At the purported 9:10pm screening (more like 9:40pm after the ads) at the Bondi Greater Union with Rob. Excellent, great actors, the cinematography is top-notch, the setting beautifully recorded. Go armed for some pacey dialogue.

The Libertine (2004)

Johnny Depp at his best, Samantha Morton and Malkovich unobtrusively excellent, great supporting cast. At the almost-empty 9:20pm screening at Hoyts Paris Fox Studios.

The Passenger (1975)

Aiming for Leone, achieving Spaghetti. At the newly refurbished and re-opened Chauvel with Rob.

The Matrix Reloaded.

Jindabyne

At The Ritz.

Ten Canoes

With Rob at the Academy Twin.

Barfly

Hard Candy at The Ritz.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2

At The Ritz.

Tristram Shandy

With Dave at Electric Shadows.

Bara prata lite

"Just a Little Chat", roughly. Another brutal Moodysson, setting the tone for his later feature-length efforts.

Superman Returns (2006)

Parker Posey, Frank Langella, always good to see. Brando rambles like it's 1979.

Hal Hartley's The Girl From Monday. I've been wanting to see it for ages, being his last released movie. Next up: Fay Grim, a reprise of Henry Fool. Any day now.

Gettin' Square.

Factotum at the Verona.

The Girl on The Bridge

25th Hour

Once Upon A Time In The West.

Trust.

X-Men 3 with Rob at The Ritz in the early afternoon.

Candy at the Academy Twin.

An Australian Trainspotting? Ack, who could say such a thing. Abbie Cornish's histrionics just expose the meaningless, heartless core of this movie. She's better here than in Somersault, but that is just saying that water is wet, or heroin is addictive.

How and why did this couple get organised? Oh, they just did, didn't they... in some pre-movie pre-heroin romance. How very insightful. The cliché is that chemistry postgrads cook up recreational pharmaceuticals to supplement their meagre incomes, so it's good to see some innovation on that front, even if it leaves A/Prof Geoffrey Rush in a shallow, monied, godfather role. Yes, Ledger does well. Yes, Abbie looks great, but there is no novelty in her empty, meaningless fits of rage.

The whole baby sequence is reminiscent of Angel Baby, deprived of redemption. The ending compounds that. It lacks the impact of baby Dawn, but most things do, I guess.

Where the Scots movie used humour to make the characters human, this one merely focusses on their weaknesses, their inarticulacies, their dead-endedness. If the pretension of art is to increase the scope of thinkable things, this aims at humility. Perhaps it is an unwitting rejoinder to Australian Heartlands.

(Let me just add that it's not terrible, and it might have been the UV coating on my glasses that lead me to divine the words "kick me" in most scenes. Others in the cinema presumably saw "charity" and chortled at some of the yeasty moments.)

Naked.

Somersault.

Live and Become at the Greater Union in the brand-spanking Westfield at Bondi Junction. Beautiful.

Carlito's Way.

Combien tu m'aimes? (How much do you love me?)

Basic Instinct.

The Squid and the Whale

At the Academy Twin with Rob and Sean.

Dr Strangelove.

Re-watch: Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America. Just as good the second time around.

Water

Screened by AID. A Jake-and-Barb and Glenn and Anthony production.

Inside Man at The Ritz with Sean and Fabian.

Happy Endings

With Rob at The Ritz. Four people in the theatre for the 9:25pm session.

V for Vendetta

With Ben and Dave at the Greater Union in Civic, Canberra.

John Hurt played Winston Smith in 1984, and here he does the crazy-old-man thing as the Big Brother equivalent. (Just in case you missed it.)

Crash

Lord of War

With Rob at the megaplex on George St. Not bad. A pastiche of Fight Club (and sundry others) narrative style and a Leaving Las Vegas-esque performance from Cage. Good to see Jared Leto again, last sighted by me in Requiem for a Dream so many years ago.

L'Enfant

At the Academy Twin with Sean, as part of the French Film Festival.

A History of Violence

At the Verona. A tad predictable and unreal, seemed a bit (too) disjunctive, not quite sure what it wanted to be. A fleshing-out of the short. Viggo convinces as the wide-eyed Indiana (or Oregon) boy, less so as Mr Philadelphia (too wooden). The last half is pretty much paint-by-the-numbers. Somehow pretty good for all of that, but not a patch on the David Lynch movie it was trying to be. Directed by David Cronenberg.

Fight Club

Match Point

At the Academy Twin. Scarlett stole the show, as is increasingly her wont. Not helped by some clunky editing and touristic cinematography.

Capote

At the Verona. For some reason the last session of the day was on early, at 8:20pm. Earnt Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar.

Syriana at The Ritz with Sean and Rob. I had trouble following it and wasn't particularly satisfied when I did.

Cul-de-sac.

Jarhead at The Ritz. It's a rehash of so many other (Vietnam) war movies, with some of the tributes verging on plagiarism (the drill sergeant's schtick from Full Metal Jacket's is raided beyond belief), others just straight cut-and-paste (an iconic sequence of Apocalypse Now is played to a roomful of marines, and the general torpor and specifically the arachnid fight of The Odd Angry Shot is evoked). I could go on. It's a bit of a shame as the themes the narrative explores are worthy ones.

Munich

At The Ritz.

Romeo is bleeding.

Gary Oldman, Lena Olin, what's not to like?

Lilja 4-Ever (2002)

Another Moodysson. He almost reaches von Trier-levels of blackness here and once again proves he is worth keeping an eye on.

A Hole in my Heart. Quite (intentionally) banal.

Corpse Bride.

Ghost in the Shell

Russian Dolls

With Sean at the Academy Twin. If they'd billed it as a RomCom I could have saved myself <$12 />. Audrey was her usual ace self, the rest more-or-less forgettable. As far as I could tell there's only one plot point, and Xavier (the French stud who incidentally writes screenplays for this sort of pap for a living) chooses the predictably capricious path of cliche purely so that the movie can last a respectable amount of time. Everyone loves being told what they already know...

Hal Hartley: Kimono

Too arty for me.

Fay Grim — a sequel to his masterpiece Henry Fool? Could it be?

Broken Flowers with Lucy at the Palace in Leichardt, and much later in the evening, Magnolia.

Tillsammans (2000)

On Cath's recommendation. Very Swedish. The subtitles I had seemed to leave out a lot of nuance.