Special Edition Judith Law Digest
I know I have discussed the career of Jude Law in this blog
before, but it is worth returning to the subject, because some people might think I like him. Well, if truth be told, he isn't a bad actor, if you think that acting consists of making your emotions really large and obvious, so that they can be discerned by children, and he is undoubtably something of a pretty-boy. No. The problem with Jude Law is that he has calamitous taste in films. He loves appearing in
shit movies. Please review this listing of
his entire cinematic career and make your own mind up. The list is chronological, by the way.
The Crane: n/d
Shopping:
shitI Love You, I Love You Not: n/d
Bent:
shitWilde:
shitGattaca:
shit***Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil:
shitMusic from Another Room: n/d
Final Cut:
shitThe Wisdom of Crocodiles: n/d
eXistenZ:
goodPresence of Mind: n/d
The Talented Mr Ripley:
shitLove, Honour and Obey:
shit*Enemy at the Gates:
shit**AI:
shit*Road to Perdition:
shitCold Mountain:
shitI Heart Huckabees:
shitSky Captain and the World of Tomorrow:
shit*Alfie:
shit**Closer:
shitThe Aviator:
goodLemony Snicket: n/d (and it's just his voice, so I don't know if it counts either way)
Key to symbols:n/d = no data
* = hilariously bad
** = painful
*** = Well designed furniture and fuck all else, at
very very great length.
Of the good films on the list, he was only in The Aviator for three seconds, and I must confess that I'm unable to account for the presence of eXistenZ on the list. But this is demonstrably the one smear upon a career remarkably untarnished by cinematic merit.
PS: Steve's mum used to teach English to Jude Law, so I know what I am talking about.
Service Announcement
Hello there gentle readers. I am sorry there have not been many reviews, I'm training to run a marathon and it is rather tiring. I suppose the important thing is, it's still not OK to watch films with Jude Law in them.
Sur mes lèvres (Read My Lips)
I liked this movie, it’s
good. It’s about a deaf girl and an ex-con, but pretty soon you stop worrying about all of that and just relate to them as characters. I investigated this film because I enjoyed The Heart my Beat Skipped, by the same director, Jacques Audiard. So I ordered Read My Lips off my DVD rental service.
And then, from almost the first frame, I realised that I had seen this film before, when it came out in the cinema, and then I’d totally forgotten
almost everything about it. And it’s not that it’s not memorable or
shit or anything, I remembered enjoying it, and that was only in 2001 It is a bit low-key and subtle, but that can't account for this phenomenon, I think someone must have neuralised my brain or something, like in Men in Black. And then I got to thinking, how many films have I seen that I’ve totally forgotten. It’s entirely possible that I might have seen Schindler’s List 12 times, for instance, forgetting it each time, and then having to watch it over, and going, why does he insist on doing that stupid German accent, every single time.
Oh well, it’s not so bad, unless I start getting tattoos done of the all the films that I see, I don’t think there’s much of a way around it. And plus, I got to enjoy this film for the first time, again.
Flavin
Dan Flavin is an artist who used to do installations using fluorescent lights. He’s dead now, but possibly not because of the tubes. Fortunately for london-based electricians, there is a big retrospective about him in the Hayward Gallery at the moment. When you go in it’s like you’re a fly about to be electrocuted by one of those zapper things they have in cake shops. Also, the green ones make you and your mates look like the corpses.
If you don’t like the low hum that fluorescent tubes make, you wouldn’t like this exhibition. It’s also capable of giving you a green tan if you remain in there for too long. A further bad point is that most the gallery staff have been turned into violent zombies because of the brain-mangling intensity of the light; I found quite a few stray attendants victimising the skateboarders in that concrete hell-pit area underneath the gallery.
This is a
good exhibition, anyway. I spoke to one of the attendants and told her that they ought to do a show of the Flavins in the dark, with all the gallery lights turned off. And then she said, the gallery lights
are turned off.
If you would like to see more art reviews, please leave me a comment or invite me to your private view, but only so long as you have nice wine and canapes (if you don’t know if you have nice wine or not, you don’t). If you don’t want to see art reviews, please leave me a comment as well. Indicate which category you fall into (art-likers or non-art-likers). You can vote as many times as you like. Votes will be counted soon. Thank you.
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance
The first half-hour or so of this film, you wonder why it's got a sticker on the front saying Asia Extreme. It's your fairly routine story about a deaf mute brother and sister who get mixed up with organ harvesting and a child abduction plot. But when it all goes wrong, that can only mean one thing. Yeah, you've guessed it. Spam city. Practically
everyone gets it, but no-one gets shot. That's not nearly nasty enough for Chan Wook Park.
If this had come out in 1982 it would have been legendary as a prince among video nasties. When I was watching this, I was literally reduced to a state of slack-jawed gawping. I mean, I thought Munich was quite violent, but Sympathy for Mr Vengeance is so shocking that you cannot take your eyes away from the screen. It's
totally unnecessary.
This film is
good. I can't wait to see Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, but at the same time, I think I might give it a while, for the sake of my mental health.
Munich
You might be thinking this film is a serious historical analysis of the events following the Black September terrorist massacre at the Munich games of 1972. Well, it is that, it is relentlessly low-key, serious and paranoiac. But mostly, it's an exercise in trying to make Eric Banana cry. With his handsome features and his big chubby cheeks, you know that Spielberg just wants to see him blub. Go on Bananaman, channel how it felt when you heard that Jim wossface got to play Jesus
and you didn't.
I enjoyed this film, I thought it was
good. Ultimately, it's a big wind-up of the more illiberal sections of American society, and that has to be applauded. It is very long, and but I like long films so that is OK. And there is one really tasteless sequence where Mr Banana is having banana-fun with Mrs Banana, but some kind of exploding helicopter flashback is going off in his head. You can just imagine the Adam and Joe toy remake.
People will probably also talk about the moral ambiguity of this film, but I thought the message was perfectly clear: never,
ever, believe a word that the Geoffrey Rush character speaks. Stick to the yellow bendies in future, Eric, they are your friends.
I am sorry, I probably should write more of a serious review of this film, but I have just seen Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and it has done things to my mind. A full review will follow, but for now I'll just say, it makes Munich look like a fucking Disney.
Guest Review: Rumour Has It
Here’s an exciting event for One Word Movie; our first guest review. Nick went to see this film last night with his bird. And he says that it’s the shittest film he’s ever seen, so I thought that I should warn you lot. It was so bad that it took him about 5 minutes to remember what it was called. And given that it’s totally a girl’s movie,
even Nick’s bird disliked it. Yeah, it’s that
shit. Nick used the word appalling, and Nick’s mum’s womens magazines gave it 2 stars. I wouldn’t trust publications like that to review Sympathy for Lady Vengeance accurately, for instance, but when it comes down to Jennifer Aniston films, they completely know their stuff.
Given that it was a
shit film, it’s now quite a good situation for Nick: he has serious payback due. We are talking reparations. He could probably get his bird to watch Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer on the basis of this.
Kevin Costner’s in this film too. I think playing second fiddle to Aniston officially qualifies him as old and busted.
Grizzly Man
I must admit that what drew me to watching this film was that I thought it would be Jackass with bears. And while there is a certain freak-quotient going on, there's a lot of sensitivity and beauty too. Alaska looks stunning. The foxes are cute. But the grizzlies just don't care.
Essentially this is the story of Timothy Treadwell, a man who refers to himself as Timmy. for god's sake. He reminded me of Paul Giamatti's mate out of Sideways, the sort of fellow who can't stop acting even if he really tries. Now take him, and plonk him down in the middle of Alaska for 13 years, and he's going to turn into something
really freaky. But Herzog engages with his personality, and tries to understand it. There's even a point where he compares him to Klaus Kinski, and I suppose, from Herzog, there can be no higher honour.
The story of Treadwell is compelling, but there are so many pleasurable incidentals - the scary pathologist, the pilot with the mustache who chews on a blade of grass, and Treadwell's ex-girlfriend with her bear earrings - that make it a engrossing film indeed.
This film is
good. Check it out, at the cinema
or on DVD.
C'etait un Rendezvous
What does that title mean in English? How about, stonk it like a bastard through the streets of Paris. This film is surrounded in many layers of mystery (mainly so that no-one had to end up in jail), but essentially, in 1976, director Claude Lelouch found himself in possession a gyro-stabilised camera, with a magazine sufficient for 10 minutes of film. He'd also just bought some ridiculous fuck-off Ferrari. So he got the genius idea of mounting camera on bumper, and you can guess the rest. It's Fear and Loathing at about 400 kmph round the Arc du Triomph. It's all one shot. And it's
real.
Definitely the best car chase you'll ever see. You could never make this film now, that's how
good it is. And I don't even like cars, they are boring.
It is true that the DVD contains only the 10 minutes of utter madness. But think of it as a condensed version of, say, The Bourne Identity, with all the dull bits with Potato Damon cut out, and I think you'll find it's remarkably good value for money.
