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All reviews - Movies (14) - Books (1)

Hard Eight review

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 20 May 2007 07:56 (A review of Hard Eight)

A weird fatalistic movie, with each of the characters plodding on with the predetermined destiny. It's film noir, right? Character's don't develop...they do whatever they were going to do. They just can't escape themselves.

It's captivating though. The opening sequence piqued my curorsity and I could tell exactly how the movie would end from the point the four main characters met up...but not *why* the characters did what they did...that was worth watching to find out.


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Good Hitchcock.

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 20 May 2007 04:34 (A review of Vertigo (1958))

Hitchcock is Hitchcock. Things are not always what they seem. Hitchcock, and his favourite leading man, James Stewart once again take a central concept - a what if - and twists a tale around it.

I'm not sure I can identify with vertigo as much as I can with some of his other obsessions - the nosy neighbour who sees too much, the case of the mistaken identity, being falsely accused of sabotage, or the murderer who taunts his dinner guests with the murder weapons and hidden body. All these are more compelling - with a faster pace - and let his leading men be more dynamic than in this tale.

Still, Hitchcock remains the master storyteller, weaving a compelling tale together that has the power to entrall the audience with this film which still knocks the socks off the majority of modern films.


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Gave up half way through.

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 20 May 2007 03:11 (A review of Jarhead)

Okay, I admit, I got bored half way through this. It was grueling, de-humanising, switching between the terribly bad and the terribly boring experiences that the marines face. It's a testiment to the soilders and what they went through. This doesn't make it entertaining viewing, however.

The trouble is, I've already seen Full Metal Jacket. So what's new? Maybe the ending had something worthwhile in it, but I never made it that far, so who knows?


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Beauty Shop review

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 13 May 2007 08:02 (A review of Beauty Shop)

A fairly predictable comedy featuring the clash of different people who eventually learn to get along and work together to overcome.

This is really one of those films that Ain't That Bad. While not being great, it's perfectly watchable, the subplots trundle along as you'd expect them to.

Alica Silverstone is pretty interesting however, and the interaction of the white girl in the black barber shop is a raise above the humdrum.

In short; Not a bad way to pass the time with some memorable bits.


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Wise Guys review

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 13 May 2007 07:57 (A review of Wise Guys)

It's your basic comedy idea; What if instead of following the competent mafia guys around, we follow the lowest of the low? The mafia guys whose primary job is to get the top mafia guy's laundry. And what if they were so incompetent that they screwed up so the whole mob came after them, and they had to rely on thier abilities to survive?

It's not bad, but it's a basic concept that isn't really deviated from very much. Things go wrong, get out of control, and we discover that our incompetent guys actually have some ability after all. Quelle suprise.

Mind you, it was never meant to be a suprising film, now was it? It is what it is, and isn't a bad version of that.

Watchable, if you're bored.


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Blood Diamond review

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 13 May 2007 07:52 (A review of Blood Diamond)

This film follows other films like "Lord of War" and "The Constant Gardener", highlighting the problems faced in africa by setting a fictional story against the backdrop of the continent's problems.

And it does it well. The cinetography is great. The plot holds together. But best of all - the characters are relativly three dimensional.

Everybody in the film doesn't suffer the fate of being "bad" or "good" or even "wonderfully callous." They're all self motivated with their own goals and desires which are mostly self-serving even if we would normally consider some of them "good" and some of them "bad".

As such, rather than being a simple morality tale there is at least merit in watching the transformation in the characters during the ensuing maddness brought about by the state of afairs in the film.

Not bad. Worth a watch.


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Spider-Man 3 review

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 13 May 2007 07:41 (A review of Spider-Man 3)

With the first two spider-man movies being good, they were always going to be a hard act to follow. Alas, this movie isn't as good.

It's not unwatchable though - there's some really cool action sequences in the movie where you want to shout and scream along with the action, and the baddies - for there are three - are quite fun an entertaining.

But...it's not flawless. The multiple bad guys - needed to make the plot really work - detract screen time from each other and don't give you quite enough time to see their development build it's obvious the filmmakers wanted you to.

Similarly, Peter's character development isn't as good. Previously, we've seen him struggle to make the right choices for the right reasons. Watching him struggle to make the wrong choices just isn't as fun.

But meh, it's still good fun, if you're prepared to laught at the aburdity of it all and not put as much stock in things as you did in the first two films.

I bet they make a forth.



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It's a Herbie movie

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 13 May 2007 07:27 (A review of Herbie: Fully Loaded)

Suspend disbelief. Believe that winning races is just a matter of wanting it bad enough. Allow an anthropomorphic car to be as cheesy as possible and break the laws of physics willy-nilly.

The little kids'll love it. The adults won't mind it if they can really disconnect their brains before turning it on.

Let's face it, it's a herbie movie. It's just the same as the old ones, with a vaneer of controlled sass put over the top by Miss Lohan


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Meh

Posted : 16 years, 10 months ago on 13 May 2007 07:23 (A review of Elizabethtown)

This film has about a billion good sequences in it. There's pure comedy genius in the ideas - the shoe, the long telephone call, the family, the video, the urn, the wake, the map...

But alas, it didn't really string together well enough to be a great movie. I found my attention wandering much as the characters seemed to wander from one scene to the next. The sum of the whole was _less_ than the parts.

Okay. Needed more direction.


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Trial Run review

Posted : 16 years, 12 months ago on 3 April 2007 12:09 (A review of Trial Run)

Essentially enjoyable as usual.

This one's not bad, but not one of Francis' best. It uses the same tropes as usual - strong male lead who has some connection with horses and some fatal flaw (this case bad lungs and vision) teaches us about an odd world that we're not familiar with (in this case Russia.) He battles some nasty vicious people in a collection of random attacks (getting more hurt during each attack) until Superior Observation allows them to Put All The Parts Together.

The Russian/Cold war aspect seems to have dated worse than a lot of his other works. Ah well.


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