Looking For Eric

Looking For Eric

***

I’m sure it’s me. I just hate everything at the moment. I think I might be having a mid-life crisis. Or maybe it’s just that it’s been about nine months since I last had sex. Whatever it is, I’m sure I should have enjoyed this more than I did. But it just seemed like I’d seen it before, and better. Raining Stones, for example. Ladybird, Ladybird. And just about everything else Ken Loach has made. Cantona was good though. But I kind of wanted to punch everyone else in the face. Yeah, it's definitely me.

To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill A Mockingbird

***

Hmmm. Not bad, but a little bit dated.

The book’s great though. As is the title sequence.

Sorry. My heart's not in this anymore.

Death At A Funeral

Death At A Funeral

***

I was expecting to hate this. But I didn’t. I rather enjoyed it. Essentially, it’s a funeral farce, and what might be described as British gross-out comedy. So some fairly repugnant moments but ultimately a thousand times less sledgehammer than anything the Farrelly brothers might come up with, and considerably darker.

Fine entertainment. Can’t wait to see the American remake. In much the same way as I can’t wait for some overbearing stranger to break into my home and shit in my mouth.

Manhattan Murder Mystery

Manhattan Murder Mystery

**

Not bad. A few laughs. Decent plot. Ultimately, however, meh.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

***

I didn’t find this to be the spectacularly uplifting film that my friend Keith did. In fact, I found it kind of depressing. Christ. I’m depressing, and that’s the truth of it.

I guess the whole point of it was that we should celebrate the lives of these people who never gave up doing what they believed in, and of course I think that’s wonderful. And the final scene, the big Japanese gig and Steve Kudlow, the leader of Anvil, talking about the important things in life, ‘a matter of attitude, what you’re willing to settle for… enjoying your life… and the most valuable things in your life is [sic] your relationships, the people you know, the places you’ve been, and the experiences you’ve had’. Hmm. I don’t know. I just didn’t think find Anvil that extraordinary – neither the individual members nor their story. But what do I know?

I’ll tell you.

Nothing.

Amélie

Amélie

*****

This is the third time I’ve seen this film, and although I’d loved it before, it never affected me like it did this time. I guess I must have been feeling particularly emotional because probably less a minute into the opening credit sequence I found myself weeping.

I love all the seemingly irrelevant details that build up a mysteriously heartbreaking picture of existence: the fly flapping its wings in Montmartre, the wine glasses dancing unseen on a windblown tablecloth, and the old man erasing his dead friend from his address book at exactly the same moment that Amélie is conceived. Then there’s the little Amélie in the title sequence. People talk about ‘the childlike fascination’ that kids have with life so much that it has become dulled to the point of cliché; here it is shown, perfectly, poignantly and almost in passing, as a little girl discovers the wonders of each the senses as she plays alone.



God, just rewatching the titles now has brought tears to my eyes. Maybe I’m just broody. I’d love to have a little daughter like Amélie.

The rest of the film is equally ecstatically inspiring. Amélie Poulain devises stratagems to help the people in her life get what they want or what they deserve, all the while closing herself off from possibilities within her own life, until eventually she has no choice.



It’s a reminder of all that is fabulous and moving in life – from bubble wrap to orgasms to letters from dead lovers to the sweet sting of failure – as well as a reminder to live – take that holiday, heal that rift, speak to that person you think you could love – while we still have time. It’s a film about the crucial importance of the imagination and fantasy, but a warning not to get lost in them.

Apart from all that, it has brilliant voiceover narration, which is very rare, it’s consistently very funny, intricately plotted and visually breathtaking. Every scene is a work of art.

Oh, and it has Audrey Tautou.



I swear I don’t say this lightly: Amélie is my favourite film of all-time.

Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds

*****

Great fun, fantastic ideas, exhilarating moments and why has a Jewish revenge movie never been done before? Or has it? Certainly not like this. Quentin Tarantino is a wonderfully audacious fellow. And nobody can deny.

Particularly fantastic things about this film include: the masses of subtitles – fuck you, word-weary proles!; the unhappy endings to many key scenes; the scene introducing ‘the Italians’; every single scene that the astonishing Christoph Waltz is in; the joyful disregard for rotten old historical fact; the reverence of the power of cinema, raised far beyond the geeky. Oh, and Julie Dreyfus. Gosh.

It’s a very rare thing for me to want to see a film at the cinema more than once, but this I definitely want to see again.

The Godfather Part Two

The Godfather Part Two

*****

For my money (I have no money) this is much better than the first Godfather movie. De Niro is hypnotic as the young Vito and Pacino is terrifying as the family head, evermore ruthless and soulless and by the end pretty much as close as a human being can get to pure evil. The final scene with the flashback to happier days when Michael wasn’t the dead-eyed sociopath he has become is masterful, and terribly sad. Oh, the evil that men do. Eh? Eh?

Moon

Moon

****

Wonderfully intriguing and very sad movie about a man on the moon exploited by an energy company. Beautiful to watch and definitely intelligent enough to stand repeated viewings. What I particularly liked about it was its lack of CGI and alien life forms. Just good old-fashioned tension, one particularly brilliant twist and Dean Stockwell doing lots of amazing things with himself.

I Love You, Man

I Love You, Man

**

Occasionally moderately entertaining if always utterly ludicrous and frequently rather irritating comedy about an estate agent with no friends trying to find a best man for his impending marriage to an annoying woman who won’t suck his cock.

Childish nonsense really. So what did I learn? Well, avoid Larry Levin films. That's about it.

The Godfather

The Godfather

****

I have a question about this film. My question is this: how on earth can you get a horse’s head into a man’s bed without waking him up? I don’t think it’s possible. That aside, this story of the mafia in post-war New York is still an incredibly good film. Although there is also the question of the total lack of believability in the Sicilian scene when all the young men in the village of Corleone are ‘dead from vendettas’…



…apparently there was more chance of dying from typhus at the time and in the late 40s Corleone was averaging about 12 murders a year – still a lot for such a small village, but not enough to wipe out the male population.

Still, very good film and, you know, a classic.

Donnie Brasco

Donnie Brasco

****

Chilling and occasionally heart-stopping true story of FBI agent Joe Pistone’s six-year undercover infiltration of a New York mafia family. A brilliantly made film which shows the good guys (the FBI) to be every bit as heartless and self-serving as the bad guys. Fantastic performances and as for the screenplay? Forget about it.

I rewatched this as part of some ongoing research about the mafia, and it thoroughly amazes me that there are people alive that are brave enough to do what Joe Pistone did. I find it incredibly heroic. The sacrifices he had to make and the fact that he found himself actually growing to like or even love some of the guys he ended up working with - it's just tragic.

Remarkable film.

The Pianist

The Pianist

*****

This film, based on the autobiography of pianist and holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman, is intensely upsetting. I can think of no other film that makes me despair of humanity to such an extent. It cripples me with grief.

And then there’s the upside. There’s survival, and kindness, and Chopin.

A terrible, beautiful, heart-breaking film. Christ, even Adrien Brody’s Oscar acceptance speech makes me cry.

Celebrity

Celebrity

*

Kenneth Branagh does an exceedingly accurate and therefore exceedingly irritating impression of Woody Allen as he stumbles from one beautiful intelligent creative neurotic woman to the next in this witless, vulgar and embarrassingly adolescent fantasy.

Lee Simon is Allen’s unattractive but somehow irresistible cipher, constantly trailing his unattainable ideal – stunningly beautiful, far too young for him, sexually voracious – and treating perfectly blameless women like dirt in the process.

I really disliked this film.

And I really, really wish Woody Allen would stop dribbling and wittering on about polymorphous perversity. We know that the idea of a woman who responds to his touch in such a way that he feels like a god is all he’s ever really wanted from life. We know that. We knew it in 1973 when he first mentioned it. He needs to stop now. He's a grown man, for God's sake.

Woody Allen is a fascinating filmmaker. When he’s on form, he can be extraordinary. When he’s out of ideas, he reverts to prurient teenager, and an 80-year-old prurient teenager with access to the world’s most beautiful actresses is, as this film shows, a recipe for disaster. (The wholly gratuitous scene wherein he has Winona Ryder’s actress character rehearsing a lesbian kiss is just horrendous.) If I’d seen this film when it came out, I would have been one of the people writing Woody Allen off, as I was when I saw the equally embarrassing Match Point. But then he goes and makes Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I guess we all have our off-decades.

Hans Christian Anderson

Hans Christian Anderson

***

I used to love Danny Kaye when I was a kid. I remember watching his films hunched over my portable TV and just being captivated. Watching this again was sadly something of a disappointment, but mostly because of the conventions of 50s musical film - far, far, far too much dancing for one thing - but I still loved Danny. Hans I wasn't so keen on however. The character of the storyteller (which, as was spelled out at the beginning of the film, bore little relation to the real man) was something of an idiot - and I'm not sure I forgave him for the way he turned on poor Peter, just because the boy told him the truth about the ballet dancer he was childishly infatuated with.

Anyway, great songs and a lovely story about the importance of stories.

Stardust Memories

Stardust Memories

***

Massively self-indulgent tale of a misanthropic film director attending a weekend retrospective of his films and spending his time dodging psycho fans and reminiscing about psycho ex-girlfriends. Packed with existential angst at the expense of plot and silliness, but still never less than fascinating and very funny on occasion.

I can understand how some people - Pauline Kael for one - felt betrayed by this film, but, you know, tough.

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures

*

A documentary about one man’s inability to hold down a relationship, which starts promisingly enough, but quickly descends into implausible, infantile tosh. Chris Waitt is both subject and filmmaker, and at the beginning, when he’s visiting his old girlfriends to find out why they all dumped him, he is certainly sympathetic, and almost likeable. However, the more you get to know him, the more you begin to understand why many of his exes want nothing whatsoever to do with him. He dismisses all of them as psychopaths (always a dead giveaway); he allows his mum to come round and clean up his pubes; he staggers around the streets of London asking women to fuck him (a real low point); and he is a mumbling, charmless prick who can’t even get out of bed to make it to meetings on time.
 
I wouldn’t have believed any of this film were true were it nor for the fact that one of Waitt’s exes wrote a novel and dedicated it to him.
 
By the time the upbeat denouement rolled around – which I didn’t believe for a minute – I found myself agreeing with one of Waitt’s girlfriends – the one who told him, quite without malice or anger, that she thought he had mental health issues. I think so too. More importantly, I think he's simply not a very nice man. And I don’t ever want to see him again.
 
Chris - you're dumped.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

****

Bruno is the eight-year-old son of a high-ranking Nazi who moves his family to a house backing onto a concentration camp. Here Bruno befriends a young Jewish boy of the same age with none-too-hilarious consequences.
 
A powerful film with a breathtaking central conceit and although it had to end where it did, I couldn’t help feel slightly robbed. I wanted to see the David Thewlis’ Nazi villain suffer for what he’d done and realize what a shit he was. But then I’m naïvely idealistic like that.
 
By the way, the child actors were amazing. But I didn't cry.

Love and Death

Love and Death

***

A cowardly Russian is forced to fight the invading French army and eventually gets caught up in a plot to murder Napoleon. This was one of my favourite Woody Allen films when I was a teen-buff. I liked it for its relentless silliness. I still do. But not as much as I used to. I guess I’m not so easily pleased these days. I guess this is a good thing.

Pineapple Express

Pineapple Express

***

Supersilly comedy action caper with some very, very funny lines and a thoroughly charming innocence about it. Some of the violence was strangely out of place though, like it didn’t know whether it wanted to be The A Team or Pulp Fiction. Lots of smashing dialogue however, and decent plotting, but please, please, enough with the screaming already. It’s like Raising Arizona had never been made.

Brüno

Brüno

*

Ugh. I didn’t believe a word of it. And for great interminable periods, it really isn’t funny. It’s like we’re supposed to laugh at the people who are appalled by Brüno's repugnance, but most of the time his repugnance is fairly appalling, and, importantly, not funny. The scenes with the gay converters I liked, but they were lost in a sea of dick jokes. Dick jokes with the jokes removed. Just dicks.

What’s most annoying is Baron Cohen’s desperation to be outrageous. It’s like he’s becoming Sebastian Horsley. It’s very dull.

And a film of a mere 81 minutes should not have you looking at your watch and sighing less than halfway through.

In Bruges

In Bruges

*****

Extremely funny hitman movie with utterly scintillating, hilariously offensive dialogue and a pretty interesting moral undertow. All the performances are splendid, but Ralph Fiennes is particularly excellent as Harry, the peculiarly principled psychopathic boss.

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

*

Awful. I watched this with a friend and his eight-your-old son. Even the eight-year-old found it childish. Basically all of the jokes from the first album and the HBO series rehashed, knocked together with a sledgehammer and sprinkled liberally with essence of Blues Brothers. (I know, I know – if you’re going to aspire to emulate cult comedy, you should set your sights a little higher.)

Just awful.

Borat

Borat

***

Decided to watch this again because I heard Richard Bacon and David Quantick last night on the radio enthusing about it. I remember being very disappointed by it when I saw it at the cinema. So I watched it again, figuring I must have missed something the first time or else been overwhelmed by the hype.

Meh. It’s not great. It’s OK, with some funny moments, but at times it's painfully fake and often it misses the mark completely. The ‘village rapist’, for example. Is that funny? I don't think it is. Rape jokes really have to funny. Otherwise they just sit there like a sex offender on a plinth.

Also, there are far too many moments like the one pictured.

Am I being foolish expecting Bruno to be much better?

Probably.

Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In

****

This is a beautiful and fascinating film. What’s most intriguing about it is how it makes a genuine heroine of a grisly serial killer. I suspect I wasn’t alone in willing Eli, the young vampire girl, to survive and prosper. She’s so sweet, and it’s not her fault she has to murder innocents.

The penultimate scene – the swimming pool scene – epitomises everything that’s great about the film as a whole. The first wonderful thing about it is that the vast majority of the gore is left to the imagination. The second wonderful thing about it is the sense of catharsis. It reminded me of the denouement of Dogville, which instilled in me a similar lust for the blood of the bad guys. I think any piece of art that can have you willing a killing has incredible power. It makes you think. You know? It makes you think about revenge, murder and the the worth or otherwise of human beings.

Apart from all that, the love story is really beautiful. I wish my first girlfriend had been a vampire. How cool would that be?

Tragically, they’re already working on the American remake. Fuckers. It’ll be terrible. The characters will be much older and you can guarantee, you will see everything.

The Hangover

The Hangover

****

The first thing I heard about this film – aside from advertising on buses – was a radio ad, which made it sound like the most horrendous, braindead remake of Bachelor Party. Then word of mouth trickled back that it was very funny. So, because I like a laugh, particularly when I’m full of bile and hatred and suffering tobacco withdrawal symptoms, I went to see it. And it is very very very funny.

If I said it was like Swingers directed by the Farrelly brothers, well, I’d be a cock. (It kind of is though, and I kind of am.) However, I don’t care for Farrelly brothers films, because they’re crass and tasteless, but in a bad way – which I guess means they tend not to make me laugh. The Hangover is certainly tasteless – there are jokes about rape and the Holocaust, for example – but it made me laugh a lot. I recommend it.

I wish they weren’t already making a sequel though.

The Kid Stays In the Picture

The Kid Stays In the Picture

***

Interesting documentary with a few great stories but not nearly as interesting as the documentary of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which contains many of the same stories and much more besides.

Visually, it was a bit of a dog, containing far, far, far too much rostrum camerawork. Also, a lot of the voiceover seemed to be taken directly from the audio book.

Not a great film, but a great story. The story however, has been told better elsewhere.

Black Cat, White Cat

Black Cat, White Cat

***

Emir Kusturica is – in my most humble opinion – certifiably insane. No doubt.

The first Kusturica film I saw was Underground. Black Cat, White Cat has much in common with that film, including eccentric gangsters, peripatetic brass orchestras and exotic animals wandering about the place, occasionally being used to clean or wipe things. But it doesn’t have the depth of Underground. It’s funny, chaotic, fascinating and great fun, but just not enough substance. And slightly too much slapstick for my taste.

So, not vintage Kusturica, but still incredibly sumptuous, and worth a million mediocre American films.

Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run

***

I saw this years ago and I think I liked it a lot more then. This time I was left with an overall feeling of meh. It’s the story of a girl who has twenty minutes to find a hundred thousand marks for her dickhead boyfriend. There are three different versions of the story, with three different outcomes.

It’s a decent film with some good scenes and great ideas, but some of the ideas are not so great, a bit gimmicky in fact (the animation for example, is just an embarrassing distraction) and pretentious (each second of our life contains a decision that may affect the course of our destiny, oh shut up). Lola’s screaming was annoying too.

There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood

****

Paul Thomas Anderson does some wonderful things with his camera. Have you seen Punch-Drunk Love? I love those bands of colour which appear on the screen during the film, reflecting the mental peculiarities of the central character. In There Will Be Blood, he does something similar with sound. Over the opening scene there is a single ominous chord which builds and grows and shifts and slides and dives, levelling out into something like a choir of sirens, foreshadowing something profoundly disastrous. It appears again later and provides the perfect sonic counterpoint to Daniel Plainview's state of mind.

Daniel Day Lewis is phenomenal as Plainview, the misanthropic, murderous, slightly insane oilman and heartless embodiment of capitalism. His scenes with Eli the healer are – particularly if you’re of an atheistic bent – extraordinary.

This is a hypnotic, beautiful, deeply sad film. With a great, somewhat hilarious ending.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

***

Brad Pitt plays a man who ages backwards. It's basically Time's Arrow for one man's trajectory, but without any particular purpose. Having said that, it is rather moving and mostly very entertaining. Having said that, it is rather overlong and not as good as it could have been if it were better. And it should have been better.

The Room

The Room

*

So this is one of those films that is said to be so bad, that it's good. And it certainly is spectacularly bad. It's so bad that I couldn't help wondering, as I was watching, whether Tommy Wiseau is mentally ill. He's the writer, director and star of the film. But of course, he cannot write, he cannot direct and he cannot act. And some of the writing, directing and acting in this film is utterly utterly baffling. It's like it was written by an eleven-year-old simpleton.

Unfortunately, I was kind of down when I watched it. And alone. If I'd been in a good mood and with friends, and preferably drugs, I would have enjoyed it much, much more.

I don't think I've seen a film quite as bad as this. So for that, it gets a star.

Talk Radio

Talk Radio

*****

I saw this many years ago and loved it. Before rewatching, I was a little worried that it would be another of those films that I used to love but now realise I was wrong to love. But it wasn’t. And I wasn’t. I still love it.

It’s the story of a quick-witted, intelligent, cynical and ever-so-slightly fucked-up talk radio ‘shock jock’ in Texas, who pisses off the wrong people and pays the price. It’s based on the true story of Alan Berg and is superbly written and performed by Eric Bogosian.

If you haven’t seen this film, please see it.

In the Loop

In the Loop

****

This is without doubt the funniest British film for many, many years. It’s intelligent and witty, brilliantly sweary and offers what feels like a spot-on dissection of British and American politics and all of its repugnantly duplicitous and self-serving bullshit.

So I’m still not quite sure why I left the cinema feeling every so slightly disappointed. But I think it was because of the non-cinematic element. It felt like The Thick Of It, which is to say, a superb TV show, and it ended in typically downbeat fashion and didn’t really give me anything to take away.

But fuck that. It’s fantastic. And I’m looking forward to seeing it again. I know there was much I missed, and I have a feeling I'll enjoy it even more on repeated viewings.

The Bourne Ultimatum

The Bourne Ultimatum

****

God, this is so much better than anything James Bond – in any of his incarnations – has ever been involved with that frankly, it’s embarrassing. From the opening scene in Moscow to the dying scenes in the East River in New York, this is a wonderful combination of moral outrage and slack-jawed exhilaration. Plus it’s a very realistic portrayal of the kind of shenanigans the CIA get up to. How do I know it’s realistic? If I told you, you’d be dead before you even had the chance to digest the information.

Swept Away

Swept Away

no stars

What a horrendous piece of shit. Everything in this film is bad, from the plot – rich America bitch is marooned with Italian fisherman who brutalises her into loving him – to the dialogue: ‘Run, my little vixen. Run! Run!’ I managed about forty minutes before I started fast-forwarding. It’s such a strange film though. It genuinely amazes me that it was ever made. I mean, at some point, reading through the script, how is it possible that no one said, ‘No. Please. Guy, Madge, we must stop this. This is wrong. This is very, very wrong.’

Amusingly, even Plan 9 From Outer Space scores higher on IMDb. And rightly so.

Human Nature

Human Nature

*

Take one hairy woman, one ‘apeman’ and one neurotic scientist. Add some very, very messy writing and the worst song ever conceived. Get human dung beetle Michel Gondry to direct and this is what you get – probably the most relentlessly asinine film to be given a cinema release until Be Kind Rewind came out.

Presumably, the filmmakers are attempting to say something clever about how – despite their clothes and cars and other trappings of so-called civilisation – human beings are actually less sophisticated than monkeys and mice. Certainly the characters in this film are predominantly self-serving and obnoxious, but sadly, this is not a clever film. Tragically, this is a remarkably stupid film without a scintilla of truth in it.

The one star is for the one chuckle I managed towards the end.

An embarrassing shambles.

I’m beginning to wonder what I ever saw in Charlie Kaufman.

Dead Man's Shoes

Dead Man's Shoes

****

A solider returns to his home town in Matlock and takes revenge on the men who years previously tortured his slightly special needs younger brother. This is a story about justice, and about the thin line between vigilante and psychopath. It’s disturbing and at times terrifying, yet still manages to be very funny and rather touching.

The cast are all great, but Paddy Considine and Toby Kebbell are outstanding as brothers Richard and Anthony.

Rocknrolla

Rocknrolla

***

Never has one man tried so hard to be Quentin Tarantino. It’s kind of embarrassing.

When it's not being risible and pathetic however, Rocknrolla - the story of a bunch of London scallywags stealing from one another - does have its moments, many of them courtesy of the tremendous Toby Kebbell. (I can't believe Kebbell lost out to Noel Clarke for the BAFTA rising star award. Clarke is blandness personified. Kebbell is devastating. Where's the justice? Eh?)

Watching this film has filled me with the desire to watch both Dead Man's Shoes (for Kebbell) and Swept Away (for a laugh).

Chaplin

Chaplin

***

Amazing story, rather blandly told. Downey is for the most part very good as Chaplin, but every now and then, especially when called upon to do broad cockney, his accent goes horribly apples and pear-shaped. Which is a shame.

Not the amazing film it should have been, but it has inspired me to watch some Chaplin films. I haven’t seen any since I was about 15. It's time.

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

no stars

Unspeakably misguided garbage.

Turned it off after seven minutes because life is precious and far, far too short.

Casino Royale

Casino Royale

**

I’ve never liked James Bond films, but I thought I’d give this one a shot because… I don’t know why really. I should’ve known better.

What a load of smug guff! Sure, it’s well-made enough and contains occasional moments of mild excitement - particularly the running chase sequence at the start - but for the most part this film is a tawdry mess of embarrassing dialogue, predictable plot twists, plastic characterisation and horrendous commerciality with Sex and the City-levels of sickening product placement. To make matters even worse, not only was it blandly misogynistic, but the Bond Girls – traditionally mythical creatures of preternatural pulchritude - were skanks! Little joke there. But really, it was all terribly sexless.

And where – for the love of Ian Fleming – where were the jokes?! Even Bourne is funnier!

I know you’re not really supposed to say this, but fuck it – I mean it :: never again.

Gran Torino

Gran Torino

****

Clint Eastwood plays an irascible old racist who deep down in his heart isn’t really racist at all, but is in fact wonderful and warm and caring and sweet. Before we get to all that noble stuff however, there is a great deal of irascibility and, it has to be said, some very funny racism. And you know, it's a rare pleasure these days to see racism depicted as good-natured, vicious banter. Because racism can be funny. In films and in real life. And it doesn’t necessarily denote a dark heart.

Gran Torino also has much to say about violence and revenge. Nothing that’s not been said a million times before of course, but it’s good to see Clint Eastwood swapping his Magnum for a pointy finger.

There are also some unrealistic scenes and some unconvincing acting on display, but on the whole Gran Torino is very entertaining and very moving. Plus, it has one of the finest moments in recent cinema history, when Eastwood's Walt Kowalski says, with a voice that makes Vin Diesel sound like Graham Norton, 'Get off my lawn'. Menace has never been so mundane. Marvellous.

Iron Man

Iron Man

****

I’m not big on action films, and superhero comics bore me to tears. I watched this however, because Robert Downey Jr is in it, and I’m just a tiny bit gay for him.

And boy oh boy oh boy, am I glad I did. Yes, I am. Downey is fantastic, bringing more than a little of his own bad boy persona to the role of Tony Stark, weapons inventor turned human peace missile with a soul. Excellent script, which tackled some serious issues but didn’t take itself seriously and also baffled me into thinking Iron Man might actually be possible.

Enormous fun from start to finish - more or less. The final battle with the enemy within didn’t really add much for me, although, having said that, I was still twitching with excitement throughout.

I also love the fact that lots of right-leaning Americans became irate at the anti-military theme. Fuck ‘em. I loved Iron Man in Afghanistan and I just wished he’d gone after wayward American troops rather than middle Eastern warlords.

Can’t wait for the sequels. But I draw the line at the comics.

Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder

***

Consistently funny and occasionally hilarious Hollywood parody in which actors in a Vietnam War film find themselves in a real combat situation with paramilitary heroin farmers on the ‘hard drug superhighway’.

Tom Cruise turns in a hilarious performance as a ruthless movie mogul which in any other film would steal the show. This show however, is stolen by Robert Downey Jr as ‘Koala-huggin’ nigger’ Kirk Lazarus, a white Australian method actor who is surgically blacked-up and refuses to ever break character.

At times however, the script grows a tad flabby and the denouement is just a little too preposterous for my tastes. On the whole though, massive fun and very much well worth seeing.

Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York

**

I was so looking forward to seeing this film. Adaptation is one of my favourite films of all time. I make everyone I get close to watch it. I identify with it.

This film however, made me feel how Pauline Kael felt after watching Stardust Memories. She called that film ‘a horrible betrayal’. That’s how I feel. I feel betrayed.

This is a film about death, decay, hopelessness and lovelessness. It’s a film about failure. And loneliness. It’s a film about green poop, golden urine and bloody stools. It’s deliberately, wilfully pretentious and staggeringly joyless.

In Adaptation I loved Charlie Kaufman’s shameless self-indulgence. In this I hated it. Because there was no joy in it. If you’re going to disappear up your own arse, you have to do it with barefaced abandon. You have to do it with a sense of fun. There was so very little fun in this film.

Speaking of the play within the film – the play which is 17 years in development – one character, who happens to be playing another character (there’s a lot of that going on – it's synecdoche, arse-numbing synecdoche), says: ‘This is tedious. This is nothing.’

This, if I'm not mistaken, is Charlie Kaufman being clever. Another character says: ‘No one wants to hear about my misery. Because they have their own. Well... fuck everybody. Amen.’

Amen.

It is a clever film – doubtless much cleverer than I am – and it’s incredibly brave. But I hated it. And I felt betrayed. I still feel betrayed.

I'm sure I have no right, but that's how I feel. Indeed, if I've understood the meaning of synecdoche at all, this film was a stool, with blood in it.

Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War

****

Exciting, fascinating, intelligent film which is about so very much more than the surface story, a fact which appears to have sailed way over the head of Peter Bradshaw. The jerk.

Having said that, I was hoping to hear maybe just a passing mention of Osama. But you know, it's subtle. It's a subtle film.

Scintillating script which made me want to know more. I may even read the book. And I hate politics.

Be Kind Rewind

Be Kind Rewind

no stars

One of the worst films I have sat through in my entire life. The central conceit is embarrassing and ridiculous. It goes like this: as a consequence of a man’s head becoming magnetised, he wipes clean all the cassettes in his friend’s video store. In order to save the business, these two witless chumps reshoot famous movies themselves, with all the talent and finesse of a pair of drunken badgers. Presumably because the people of Passaic, New Jersey are all severely mentally retarded, these films become enormously successful and blah blah blah don't waste my fucking time with this garbage, you bastards.

Genuine turd.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

***

Very funny in places. Kind of annoying in others. Too much slapstick and silliness when it could perhaps have been something more substantial, and funnier for it.

Still. 'Very funny in places' is nothing to be sneezed at.

Naked

Naked

****

In terms of unremitting bleakness, I can think of few films that come close to Mike Leigh’s Naked. I’d forgotten quite how hopeless it is. However, in amongst the violence and viciousness, there are thank God, a great many laughs to be had. Sadly, as laughs go, these are fairly unremittingly bleak laughs, invariably at the expense of one or more broken aspect of the cracked egg that is humankind.

Actually no, there are warm moments too, but for the most part Naked is fierce and brutal and relentless and a searing indictment of just about everything. I still think it's a nihilistic tour de force and a brilliant, harrowing film. It's just slightly too bleak for me at the moment I'm afraid.

I really may have to get out of London.

It's a big world.

Anyway, if you haven't seen this film, look at some of the dialogue. It'll kill ya.