Bateman Begins
There is a lovely bit in this movie when Christian Bale (or Patrick Bateman as I like to call him) evacuates a whole Wayne mansion-full of party guests with a big American Psycho sneer. You really expect him to follow it by chopping a load of them up, then shouting at the Chinese woman in the dry cleaning when she can't get the blood out of the sheets.
I was worried that, at 140 minutes, this film was going to be too long. Because if it were shit, it would be brutally boring and you'd chew your own arm off to escape. But you leave feeling satisfied because there's time for story and character development - it's not just rubbish computer-generated special-effects and nobber wise-cracks calibrated to appeal to 12-year olds. The only really bad thing is that the dialogue’s a bit shit sometimes, there’s the sort of lines in it that the lads in Oasis would think are really really clever.
But essentially the supervillain in this movie tries to destroy Gotham city using "weaponised hallucinogens" to give the populous a really evil trip; I left satisfied. This film is
good. I’m a bit worried about the sequel though – will they put genetically modified weed into everyone’s Shredded Wheat to make everyone unforgivably monged?
Dig!
If you have kids who spend too much time in the garage wanting to be rock stars, take them to see this film. Then they will study hard to pass all the accountancy exams in the world.
There are two bands in this film. The bands used to be friends with one another. The first band is the Dandy Warhols, they are good looking and they play songs with funny lyrics and guitars. The other band is the Brian Jonestown Massacre. They take lots of heroin, have Mormon sideburns, and their songs are full of sitar orchestrations. Everyone in the film says that their music is great, but it sounds
shit to me. I would never buy one of their albums. On the other hand, I would go to one of their live shows. These seem mainly to consist of either fighting the audience or the other people in the band. There is quite a lot of this in the film; you sense that the people who made the film had a large rucus selection to chose from. They stalk the Dandy Warhols for a while, too. On rollerskates.
I don't think this is as fantastic as everyone says it is. But it is still
good. I think it would be a good thing to watch this on DVD perhaps, on a night when you are feeling despondent about your shit, soul crushing employment, because it could be much much worse. You could be him out of the Brian Jonestown Massacre.
War of the Worlds
There's some relationship drama, but mostly it's just enormous alien extermination-tripods kicking the shit out of Americans. Tom Cruise gets to run around like a chimp. The wee kids are only a bit irritating. And it's surprisingly nasty. I wouldn't take kids to watch it unless you wanted to make them shit themselves.
The ending is still stupid, but that's hardly Spielberg's fault. The aliens lose because they haven't had their jabs? I think it would be more entertaining if they'd forgotten their two pin adaptors so they're unable to recharge their death rays. I bet the aliens' mums will be furious with them.
Apart from this, it is a
good movie. And you get to look at Tom Cruise's teeth, they are beautiful, thanks Tom.
