Brick
I was secretly hoping that this film was about the triathlon training sessions where you do a bike ride and a run (hence, BRICK). But this turned out not to be the case, instead it's like The Maltese Falcon re-enacted by the cast of Napoleon Dynamite. And you can only understand about 30% of the dialogue. I really enjoyed this, I thought it was
good, which I suppose is an object lesson in how pleasantly one can pleasantly surprise oneself when one has low or no expectations.
On the other hand, if you don't like pastiches of Bogart movies you might be a bit disappointed. My advice to people like this would be watch The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not repeatedly until you can see Hoagy Carmichael on the inside of your eyelids when you blink.
Ping Pong
I thought this was going to be a Japanese version of Shaolin Soccer*, but about table tennis, surely the greatest game to grace God's earth, but I was wrong. In fact, it's a sports movie about the importance of hard work and the Corinthian spirit over talent, with only one ridiculous kung fu moment. I felt a little cheated.
Nothing very much apart from table tennis happens in the film, but it doesn't have to, because the whole thing reeks of sublimated gay sex, almost as much as Chariots of Fire, officially the gayest film ever, even gayer than that Derek Jarman about the Romans where the naked centurions casually toss a prehistoric frisbee from man to man.
It's just about worth a
good rating, anyway.
* Shaolin Soccer is
shit, there are 3 very good minutes in it and that is all. Watch Kung Fu Hustle instead.
M:I:III
You'd never believe me if I told you that this film, with its hubristically punctuated title, wasn't
shit. It is ridiculously vulgar yet full of itself, for instance, no-one has nostrils, you have a nasal cavity, and yet into said nasal cavity Truman Capote introduces explosive bogeys or something, and Tom Cruise gets one up
his nasal cavities and consequently he has to get his heart stoppped and restarted by his girl in a scene with the slow-mo on and the emotion tunes playing which could almost be sad if it wasn't for the fact that the camera can't resist oggling her (admittedly fabulous) tits.
It might be
shit, but it's very entertaning. There's about 15 boring minutes of talking at the beginning, which is suceeded by a 100-minute non-stop action sequence. And Tom Cruise's acting is a joy to behold. When there is that scene in Men in Black where they have the TV screens showing all the resident aliens, Top Gun is playing on one of them, if you know what I mean and I think you do. I would pay big money to see Cruise's Hamlet, I really would.
Sorry I gave away the end, by the way.
