That Criminal Film
I like the adverts for that Criminal film. It comes out this week. I was wondering if it was a remake of that Argentinian improbable con-flick, Nine Queens. Well, so it is. The original was
good, driven by a stupidly convoluted plot with little characterisation. Thoroughly well executed and good clean fun. Maybe the remake will be alright, or more likely, it will be
shit.
I will be spending my money on that Head-On film I think. It looks mad, like the Old Boy of relationship dramas. Good show by the Germans, can't imagine it getting remade, wouldn't want to be disabused of this notion either.
A Very Long Engagement
It's alright, not as good as Amelie, or Um-melie if you're a seppo. Audrey thingy is a bit wasted, and the title does rather give away the ending if you stop to think about it for 0.1 of a second. But it is all beautifully put together and there is big swelling music to tell you when to feel emotional.
I found it diverting and pleasant to watch for a couple of hours. If you are a girl, and a soppy one at that, you will probably think it's fantastic, although even then you may have to gag back the stomach acids when she's in the car with her aunt at the end. If you've seen it, you know the bit. So, I reckon this film is
good, it's stupid but well-executed, like Con Air for girls.
On the other hand, given that we've just been mugged by the French at the rugby, it isn't half pleasant to see them all getting machine-gunned in the trenches.
It has been a few days since my last confession
And since then, father, I have been clean of body and mind (well, relatively), and I haven't abused myself by watching
shit movies. Unfortunately, I am sorry to say that I haven't watched any movies, or indeed had any fun since I wrote last. I did, however, watch Nathan Barley on the telly. Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker are behind it all, and I really would buy a zone 6 travelcard if even one of these was picking his nose in a shop-window in Orpington. But obviously, when you get your expectations up like that, like I did when I saw a £45 pound sofa in IKEA, some fucker has to do a riot and ruin it all. Oh dear, Nathan Barley really was a horse-load of
shit. It reminds me of Chris Morris's Jam, which was clever but actually mind-shreddingly unfunny.
Which puts me in mind of that new film coming out next week, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Even though Bill Murray is in it, my shit radar is picking up a strong concentration of 'brown gold' here, let me tell you.
I really enjoyed Wes Anderson's Rushmore. It is
good. The birds sing in the trees, the actors are having fun acting, and you can't tell exactly what's going to happen in it just from looking at the poster. But that came out in 1998 and 1998 is a long time ago, dude. In 1998 I was four foot tall and weighed 75 pounds.
Since then I have grown a couple of foot, and Wes Anderson made The Royal Tenenbaums, which was a pile of
shit. They got loads of actors, and loads of funny tracksuits, and then forgot to have any ideas. So it was just like a tray of minced cow-bollocks in a butcher's shop in Walthamstow. Oh yeah, and Esquire magazine really liked it. If Esquire magazine likes something, it means you'd get more laughs out of Mein Kampf, quite frankly. But I suppose to compensate you do get to look at features about cake-shy models showing the lower third of one fake tit.
So. The point being, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou looks like The Royal Tenenbaums, but with wetsuits instead of tracksuits. It's going to be
shit. Spend your nine quid elsewhere.
Ho ho ho
I went downstairs to find Dave watching Con Air on Sunday night. There is little to admire about that film, but much to enjoy. It's a very
good dumb action movie, like Predator for instance. Even taking into account the scary fact that John Cusack appears to be made out of some kind of shiny plastic in it.
Half way through they had the Channel 5 news on (Kate Moss does poo) and then they had this hilarious ident, I assumed it was for an insurance company or something. There is some bloke on a gentle snow-slope on a mountain. He puts his haversack on the ground, downslope from him. I start to laugh because it's obvious what's going to happen next. The 'sac slides away from him. He goes to grab it, but loses his footing. He accelerates down the slope for a while, trying to do the most feeble ice-axe self-arrests in history, he uses his ice-axe to tap on the slope in the same way that a delivery man might tap on the window of a tea-shop to let them know their shipment of Oolong has just arrived and there are 2 extra scones. And then just when he gets his axe in, he's left dangling over 10,000m of exposure or something preposterous like that.
At this point I was expecting the slogan of the insurance company to pop up, maybe something like "morons fuck up all the time, maybe you should pay us all your cash". But no, the deep voice came on saying: Vertical Limit, next week on 5. I've seen it before but I was drunk then. I am almost tempted to watch it again, sober, to assess just how risible it is. This is a prince among
shit movies. Don't watch more than 5 minutes of it or you'll be struck blind.
Shit Pie
You might think that Ocean's 12 has had mixed reviews. Some critics say it's good, some say it's vacuous and
shit. At first glance, these positions may appear to be contradictory, but I will demonstrate that they are not, not at all. Ocean's 12 sails along on phoned-in performanes, twiddled together by a bored director. It even employs the dreadful movie device of knowing postmodernism. (I thought The Last Action Hero had put a bullet in that lame horse but sadly not. Oh yes and Jacques Derrida is dead, you can stop pretending that you understand, or even more sickeningly,
enjoy, his works now.)
The critics who liked Ocean's 12 say that these things are cool, and therefore the film is worth watching. Obviously they are wrong, which qualifies them as
wankers. On the other hand, people who like movies that are about something (apart from pro-celebrity nosepicking) say this film is
shit. For the time being, these writers are alright with me, I will ignore what they all said about Million Dollar Baby.
So there really is no contradiction. Wankers say it's good, meaning it's
shit, and everyone else says it's
shit, meaning it's
shit.
Obviously I haven't seen this movie, and I have no intention of doing so. I implore you to do the same, so that hopefully in the 25th century they will stop making
shit sicked up nothing-movies.
For about half a millisecond I did wonder if I was being harsh to the people involved in this film, slagging it off without even watching so much as the trailer. Well, I thought I was being a little unfair, but then I realised I'm not half as disrespectful as the film-makers, making this warmed-up chewed-over
shit pie and then expecting us to pay nine bloody quid for the privilege of getting bored by it. Repeat, do not go and see this, Clooney is turning into Shatner and if you go and see this film
you're helping him.
Sideways
What a pile of
shit. I was so disappointed. No, only joking. When all the critics line up in a 21-bum salute, it normally means it's a bit of a dull film, but Sideways is fantastic. It can do beauty and love, but it's much more interested in ugliness and shame. Alexander Payne, the director, especially loves filming ugly food. There was plenty of that in About Schmidt and it's on show here too: good work that man. You feel sorry for the actors having to put that stuff in their faces.
And you can really believe in the characters, which is fun because they go and do awful things. Great entertainment. However I was relieved not to empathise much with either of the male leads, but give me another 10 years of simmering resentment, let me go a bit balder, and I might just get there. Good support too, from Virginia Madsen, playing a wine nerd.
I have this theory about what discriminates
good art from
shit art. Apart from the presence of Shatner, that is. In
good art, the audience has to interpret things, and work out stuff for themselves. So in Sideways you have all these shots of him from American Splendor looking pensive, and you have to work out what he's thinking. And in
shit art, bloody Morgan Freeman tells you what Clint's going to do, and then Clint does it, and then he tells you what he's just done. I fucking hate that. That's why voice-overs are always shit, unless they lie, like in Fight Club, for instance.
My only gripe with Sideways is that the trailer essentially gives the entire story away. You bastards. Still, it's a very
good film, go and see it.
The Bourne WhoGivesAShit?
Potatoes. A very versatile tuber, even though Andrew doesn't like them. They're great roasted, sauteed or chipped. They're very functional as an art material, and I think if you get some acetone, you can extract strands of their DNA. What a player. One thing they are not so good at, however, is fronting a Major Motion Picture. Like The Bourne Supremacy, for instance.
These would be perfectly acceptable dull action movies, were it not for Matt Spudder Damon in the lead role. With him, they are risible and
shit. I swear he is the seppo equivalent of Johnny Vegas. They even have to speed the fighting up and make it all blurry, because Mr Potato Damon throws punches like he's had 12 pints of Guinness. And isn't there something in the first movie about how he can run a mile in 5 and half minutes after eating a Bhuna without so much as a wet fart. Come on. As if.
Actually, the car chase is good in the first film. That's it, you can turn off afterwards.
The BBFC does not lie
The best film reviews are those generated by the British Board of Film Classification. OK they probably have to watch porn all day,
very carefully, in order to assess how smutty it is. But when they get to watch normal films they are usually bang on the money. For instance, their consumer advice for Rabbit Proof Fence was: contains mild emotional intensity. Fantastic. You really can't slag it off any more efficiently than that.
The consumer advice for The Aviator had me worried, too: "One use of strong language, a moderate scene of injury". And there was me thinking the kind of film Scorsese wanted to make would "contain 847 uses of the Prince of Swearwords, and Joe Pesci stoving someone's head in with a bowling ball".
It's also interesting to compare the assessment of the video version of American Psycho with its sequel, American Psycho II - All American Girl. In the BBFC Top Trumps, American Psycho is rated like this:
Language: Frequent, strong
Sex/Nudity: Occasional, strong
Violence: Frequent, strong
Other: Frequent strong horror
Shatner: None
... Whereas American Psycho II lags sadly behind, apart from one key index.
Language: Some, strong
Sex/Nudity: Some mild references
Violence: Some, strong.
Other: Moderate horror
Shatner: Frequent, strong
Note the masterful deployment of the Moderate horror rating for the sequel. Genius. Incidentally, American Psycho II - All American Girl is directed by Morgan "J" Freeman. Not the same one as stalks Clint through Million Dollar Baby, no, this one is a spiky-haired white twat. In 1993 our Freeman directed a film called "Goddard disait que.." so it looks like his career is heading in the right direction.
Shocking Confession
I liked Bridget Jones and would actually go so far as to give it a
good rating.
I tried not to like it but it didn't work. I'm at a loss as to how that happened. Maybe they slipped me a protein bar with something in it.
Mind you, the sequel is obviously manufactured and
shit. But if you can mistake Galaxy bars for real chocolate maybe you're so indiscriminate that you would like it.
