peteg's blog 2007-04-22-TheNamesake.autumn

North by Northwest

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Well, that about wraps it up for this trilogy, at least until they crank out The Hobbit. As a not-particularly-huge fan of the books, I will resist criticising it too much...

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The second part of the long-winded Extended Edition. This one didn't drag as much as I remembered it; perhaps they substituted some character development of Frodo for those endless scenes of the rest of them running around New Zealand. Still, it suffers in the same way as every other middle movie, by being not much more than glue. The CGI looks horrendous; not so much the dynamic stuff (the Ents look fine) but the super-fake sets.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The super-long three-and-a-bit hour Extended Edition. The pacing and editing of these movies really annoyed me when I first saw them, and that feeling remains undiminished. The CGI looks pretty fake to my eye, but fortunately New Zealand is beautiful enough to overcome all of this.

Naked

Yeah, this is as good as I remember it, better even.

Paths of Glory

Love and Human Remains

I first saw this strange and wonderful movie about ten years ago with Pete R.. It's a Canadian Naked, albeit not as dense.

Blade Runner

That about wraps it up for Blake's 7.

What started as a promising politico-scifi Doctor Who-for-adults headed for the crapper somewhere around the beginning of Season 2. Actually, if I could be arsed I'm sure I could pin-point the exact moment when it ceased to be interesting. The final iconic episode is shamed by some of the most unbelievable tosh in the entire genre. What a wasted opportunity.

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

What a strange little movie. Slavoj Žižek's stream of consciousness is not even internally consistent, let alone coherent. It's the decrepit vehicle of psychoanalysis smashing into the 21st century, with all the fascination of a staged car crash.

Revealingly, his wikipedia page says:

One of the problems in outlining Žižek's work and ideas is that for the layperson he seems to change his theoretical position (for instance, on the question of whether Lacan is a structuralist or poststructuralist) between books and sometimes even within the pages of one book. Because of this, some of his critics have accused him of inconsistency and lacking intellectual rigor. However, Ian Parker claims that there is no "Žižekian" system of philosophy because Žižek, with all his inconsistencies, is trying to make us think much harder about what we are willing to believe and accept from a single writer.

I reckon he's fallen off the narrow ridge of helping people to think critically and fallen into the chasm of intellectual stupor. Then again, his tradition is rife with the same, and the public demands its cranks.

The Third Man

I am perplexed that this is rated at 48 in IMDB's top 250. The acting, cinematography, sets, etc. etc. are fine, but the plot is threadbare. This is no Casablanca.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Director's Cut?)

The full version, with the there's-not-gonna-be-a-T3 ending.

88 Minutes

At Galaxy Cinema on Nguyễn Du with Loan. Not bad, but the climax is a bit of a let down. Al Pacino is a bit too old for this kind of schtick.

War on Democracy

Perhaps better titled John Pilger's War on Democracy, in the tradition of The Chaser. While I wholeheartedly agree that the issues he highlights are worthy, I struggle with how weak his evidential requirements are. I don't doubt that one could make an almost-identical movie about John Howard's Australia, full of "national security is all" crackpots, and people whose aspirations are stymied. (Just ask any arty type.) His allusions to "secret documents" no longer cut it, if they ever did; put them on the internet, etc. etc.

Vaguely ironic to me is that Vietnam is undergoing massive poverty reduction (etc.) without political instability or a Western-style democracy.

Most interesting is the cult of personality that Chavez has cultivated. Little is made of his recent move to suspend the parliament, while much is made of the coup's move to do the same.

I don't think John Pilger is dishonest; I think the case is strong enough that he could focus on root causes and what's-to-be-done rather than drilling us about the American Empire. (Obviously it exists, and has done so since at least World War II; just look at the major international institutions, especially the economic ones.) It's too much like a Michael Moore movie without the humour.

Zwartboek (Black Book)

Dare I say this is Verhoeven's best since Total Recall... The plot is a little clunky at some points, but overall it's very well constructed.

The Terminator

Hard to get excited about this movie on a fourth or fifth viewing. If anything, Arnie has too many lines, and the special effects are ambitiously embarassing. The schmaltz is laid on way to thick, and Arnie has little opportunity to ham it up.

err... yes, I am watching too many movies again. I've still got to get to David Lynch's new one, and I saw Al Pacino's face on a billboard here, so I will probably venture back to the cinema some time soon.

Brick

I enjoyed this about as much as the first time, but followed the pow-wow much more closely with the help of the pause and rewind buttons.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

What a turkey. I last saw this at the cinema when it was released in 2003.

I, Robot

Wow, this isn't anywhere near as bad as I feared. Will Smith is in Men in Black mode, the CGI is over-the-top, and the steady hand of Alex Proyas stops things from getting too out of control. Forget Asimov and don't think too hard. Thanks Rob.

I Want You

Struck me as a warm-up to his even-racier later movies. He does a better job when the themes are clearer in his mind. Rachel Weisz is luminous, as are the other (lesser-known) actors.

Apocalypse Now (Redux)

In several sittings, the damn thing is too long to watch in one go. The last time I saw it was in a cinema back in 2002 or so, when the "redux" version was released.

Wild at Heart

A David Lynch classic, wedged somewhat uncomfortably between his signature Blue Velvet and his later work on Twin Peaks. I reckon this just might be Nicolas Cage's best effort.

Oi, amigo. If ever somethin' don't feel right to you, remember what Pancho said to the Cisco Kid... 'Let's win, before we're dancing at the end of a rope, without music.'

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

At the Galaxy Cinema with Dũng, Loan and Mai. It was pretty much the same as an Australian cinema, roughly identical to one of the Academy Twin theatres but with worse sound. As the majority of patrons were reading subtitles, the noise levels were pretty high.

Until now I've remained as completely oblivious to the whole Harry Potter phenomenon as anyone can, and I don't think this movie was a good one to start with. Still, a pleasant bit of fluff.

Last Train to Freo

It strikes me that this might have been really good on the stage, but it doesn't work as a movie. The acting is intermittently excellent, but the climax is too implausible for what we have seen up to that point.

Aliens

The Hidden

An ancient Kyle MacLachlan vehicle, somewhat worse than one might expect as a follow-up to Blue Velvet but nevertheless reasonably robust for a cop / car chase / soft sci-fi movie. I guess this segues into his Twin Peaks character...

Full Metal Jacket

Transformers

At The Ritz with Jen. Product placement runs deep in this movie; I laughed a lot at the references to eBay seller ladiesman217, but was disappointed (You've got) The Touch didn't make an appearance.

East of Eden

Waitress

At Greater Union on George St, as part of the Sydney Film Festival. I came to this movie with an appreciation of Adrienne Shelly's acting for Hal Hartley, especially in Trust opposite Martin Donovan, and was wondering what she would make of the role of auteur.

This movie is a a bit trite, with a fairly stodgy plot somewhat saved by some decent acting and Hal Hartley-ish moments of direction and dialogue. The opening is quite fun though things go to pot as the serious issues supplant the comedic. The ending is quite sudden and brutal; it is not clear how anything really got resolved. Her male characters are flimsy and creepily unlikeable, though perhaps I missed the erotic subtext. A piece of mostly agreeable fluff.

Life is Sweet

Another Mike Leigh film. Better than All or Nothing.

All or Nothing

Another Mike Leigh. This isn't as good as the earlier stuff.

All the President's Men

The movie is fairly gripping, but, like the book except worse, it severely curtails the treatment of the interesting and consequential events between their dogged newspaper reportage and the Watergate tapes fiasco that ultimately forced Nixon's resignation.

Secrets & Lies

Another Mike Leigh masterpiece. More measured than its truly excellent predecessor Naked, about the same pace as Vera Drake.

Has this man made a crap movie?

The Good German

Garden State

The Manchurian Candidate

The original one, with Frank Sinatra in it.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End

I did not understand this movie.

The Good Shepherd

Zodiac

With Rob at The Ritz.

Road to Perdition

Fay Grim

Ah, at long last, another film from Hal Hartley. I first heard about this, his sequel to Henry Fool back in 2005 or so.

The plot is pretty much spaghetti, and while it demands a lot of suspension of disbelief it is easier to follow than The Girl From Monday. Most of the old characters return, though the old familiar settings of the neighbourhood, the garbage processing facility and the deli are replaced by some fairly generic European ones, as one might expect from Hal Hartley's assertion that making movies in New York is too expensive these days.

Give it a go, it's a lot of fun.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

One might view this as the culmination of a thirty-hour David Lynch movie (the Twin Peaks TV series), and as such it is pretty pointless, just making explicit what we already knew or guessed from the show. I think he should've ridden the ambiguity a bit more.

Anyway, from the TV show: "Denise" is David Duchovny's cross-dressing DEA agent character. Apropos schoolgirl Audrey, who has just kissed FBI Special Agent Cooper full on the mouth:

Denise: I may be wearing a dress, but I still pull my panties on one leg at a time, if you know what I mean.
Cooper: Not really.

Hmm, perhaps you just have to watch it for yourself.

Bastard Boys

The Weather Underground

With Sarah and flatmates at the Black Rose Anarchist Bookshop on Enmore Road.

Breach

At The Ritz. An interesting subject (an FBI agent, devout Catholic, etc. selling U.S. secrets to the Russians), a boring portrayal. Reality is too tedious for these Hollywood monkeys, so we get a sexed up thriller that omits such things of general interest as motive (why continue to pass information to the K.B.G. for ten years after the cold war came to an end?) and the nature of the secrets that were passed (OK, don't speculate, just tell us that remains classified). But hey, bright shiny thing, we've all got ADD now.

The last time I looked at Laura Linney and had any other reaction than "oh, that's Laura Linney" was when she played the wife in The Squid and the Whale. I thought she was wonderful in that role. The lead young bloke struck me as a proto-Matt Damon (shudder).

Shaun of the Dead

The Shawshank Redemption

The Fountain

Mr Cranky says it all:

Frankly, I think getting off in public over the fact you married a hot, famous woman is kind of rude. Why couldn't Aronofsky and Weisz celebrate their love by doing what everyone else does and film themselves having sex?

The Book of Revelation

True Romance

Noise

At the Verona in the early evening. There seem to be a gazillion movies with this name.

Total Recall

Little Children

The Italian

At the Orpheum in the early afternoon, another grey-power meeting. I've been watching a lot of Russian culture recently, though this reminded me more of Lilja 4-ever.

The Namesake

At the Verona. As Jacob once observed, I wish I'd read Gogol's The Overcoat before watching this movie, and it, of course, requires me to read it now. The lead actress is fantastic and I would have liked to know more about the father, who comes across as abstracted yet human, but is incompletely drawn.

Wall Street

Rife with cliché, the editing of this movie was a mite strange, and the dialogue transiently clunky. Gordon Gekko is pure stereotype, the plot too weirdly redemptive. I was a bit perplexed by his assertion:

That's the thing about WASPs, they love animals, can't stand people.

The 40 Year Old Virgin

Stranger than Fiction

The Ice Storm

The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith

Reign Over Me

At the brand-spanking Dendy in Civic with Dave.

Priceless

With Dave and Luke in an intermission to moving house.

The Lives of Others

Mid-afternoon at the Academy Twin, at what appeared to be a grey-power meeting. I was riveted for almost all of it, modulo the Lolita plot device near the two-thirds mark. The acting is top-notch, the direction classical.

Hot Fuzz

Early evening session at the Verona.

Platoon

Scoop

Death of a President

A mostly paint-by-the-numbers effort. Still, always good to see James Urbaniak unleashing the inner geek.

Bobby

There's a whiff of the Vietnam War in the air, and it must be an election-year-of-sorts in the U.S. This movie also broods on contemporaneous events such as the murder of Martin Luther King Jr and the Prague Spring. It's not particularly subtle, with the sledgehammer implication that Camelot could perhaps have saved us all the mess between then and now. Chomsky, of course, disagrees.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

An excellent doco on the top technocrat of the Vietnam War. In this instance Chomsky is right, McNamara does come across as a small-time manager/engineer charged with optimising the means of destruction, showing little concern for the non-American fallout.

The Illusionist

At the Dendy Newtown with Tom. Not completely terrible but a long way from decent; the main characters are flat and someone's just painting by the numbers.

Man of the Year

Letters from Iwo Jima

Free wireless at the Verona café. What a great space for lurking.

This is a lot less violent but no less graphic than Flags of our Fathers, with a focus on the effect of decreasing morale amongst the Japanese forces on Iwo Jima.

The U.S. v John Lennon

As with Leonard Cohen, John Lennon is best when he's doing the talking and singing. This is partly a warning about political interference in the INS but mostly hagiography from talking heads. The boomers will love it.

On the topic of political protest about Vietnam in the late 1960s, I thought it's time I watched Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream speech in full. Contrast it to current political rhetoric (did I hear Kevin Andrews roll out the tired old "We decide who comes to this country and the manner in which they come?") and despair. Heck, even accountability is rare, and I find Nixon's resignation speech unthinkable now.

The Twelve Tasks of Asterix

Caligula

The Last King of Scotland

At the Verona with Jen. Structurally this movie is quite similar to Per Olov Enquist's fictional historicism The Visit of the Royal Physician: they share the mad kingpin, the handsome physician besotted with a/the queen, the refraction of the story through a physician-as-intimate-and-trusted-advisor prism, the betrayal of the initial ideals of improving the country and the acceptance of the omelette doctrine. Abstractly we see the struggle to throw off the imperial yoke degenerate into quite another sort of fiasco, and the bloodlessness of the English establishment. Forest Whitaker is excellent, and I'd only quibble a bit about some of the signature FilmFour camera work and editing.

Suffice it to say that if you liked one you'll probably like the other (though the book requires some patience).

Road to Guantanamo

A Beautiful Mind

The Atomic Café

Over breakfast, a pastiche of old US atomic bomb and energy propaganda films and interviews. Dare I say it's dated.

Blood Diamond

At the Greater Union gigaplex on George St with Jen. A topic worthy of a better movie.

The Queen

Some good acting and keenly-observed characterisations. The plot is quite pedestrian and unenlightening. I was expecting "Prince Philip" to share more of his priceless wisdom.

Natural Born Killers

Altman: Images

Pretty strange. It struck me as an unsuccessful precursor to Kubrick's The Shining.

MASH

Babel

At the Verona with Jen. An American movie made for American audiences; most players act irrationally and moreover little justification or explanation is provided. The insensitivity and self-centredness of the American couple hits us over the head time and again, like politicians' cliches (rapidly converging with management sprok). Way overlong and overblown.

Short Cuts

The best by Altman I've yet seen. It's "based on the writings of Raymond Carver" and one of the subplots here was also strung out into Jindabyne.

Flushed Away

I'm not altogether sure Aardman's claymation charm survives in this movie, though lovers of (the first) Shrek will probably be satisfied. The French get an incredibly raw deal here, with the exception of an unbelievably hilarious homage to Marcel Marceau. That was worth the six bucks cheapo-Tuesday admission price at The Ritz by itself.

The formula of jokes-for-the-adults / jokes-for-the-kids is slavishly followed, and given the sewer theme it leads to some pretty off-colour humour from the po-faced albino ex-lab rat muscle; apropos last night's curry he ruminates "My bum looks like the flag of Japan". Unlike Wallace and Gromit the invention count is rather low, and the characters feel more American than English. I almost wished the Gromit toy in the opening scene had got up and done something incredibly clever and disrespectful to the self-proclaimed playrat. I think Jen was less impressed overall with this piece of "family" holiday fluff.

Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision

An old BBC Omnibus doco. Available from Google Video.