Breathless
Not the 1983 Richard Gere remake, the 1960 Goddard original. This film is peculiar, in that it is about as old as my dad, but it is also has the powers of being piss-elegant, super-sexy and cooler than eating lunch in a
hummus bar. I have never seen a Belmondo film before, but he models himself on Bogart and that is no bad thing. Also, he makes smoking look
excellent.
Plus it is not all weird nouvelle vague editing tics, which is a bit of a relief. Sometimes it is nice to watch a film and feel that your forebrain is not going to pop clean out of your skull due to non-sequential composition techniques. Quentin Tarantino prefers the remake, but then again he also said "when I'm getting serious about a girl, I show her Rio Bravo and she better fucking like it."
The original is
good. I will get around to watching the Richard Gere version sometime, honest.
Smokin' Aces
We have a
guest reviewer, which is nice, because I would never fork over six quid to see that pile of
shit.
The Last King of Scotland
People always accused Forest Whitaker of being a good actor, but I thought that must be like the customer service on Virgin trains - you read a lot about it but never actually see any. Dude was in Battlefield Earth for god's sake. I did like him in Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (
good) but he hardly taxes himself in that.
Well, all I can say is that he is completely triumphant as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, and if you could discern that talent from his performances in films like Species (
shit) or Phenomenon (
shit) you are more than welcome to eat my tins of mackeral, write this blog, and put my bets on. Essentially he plays the most nightmarish boss that you ever had - alternately charming and psychotic - except that rather than make you cry in the stinky work bogs, he'd prefer to play Mr Potatohead with your arms and legs.
It's shot documentary-style by Kevin MacDonald (the Touching the Void geezer) which works, and it makes you want to go to Uganda in the 70s, so that adds up to it being
good. Incidentally, Kevin MacDonald's
next film apparently features Klaus Barbie and Adolf Hitler as themselves. Nice. I am not sure if I want to go to any of his dinner parties any more.
A Prairie Home Companion
A charming, whimsical film, almost entirely about death and Country music.
Good.
Before Night Falls
This is a beautifully shot, sensitive drama about the life and times of a gay writer in Cuba. But because it is set in Cuba and not Edwardian England it is not like farty Merchant Ivory, it is full of homosexual concentration camps, lashings of chunky man-cock, and Johnny Depp playing a cross-dressing prison guard. It doesn't really say much about why the bloke in it is a writer, but who cares?
Good.
Not the 1983 Richard Gere remake, the 1960 Goddard original. This film is peculiar, in that it is about as old as my dad, but it is also has the powers of being piss-elegant, super-sexy and cooler than eating lunch in a hummus bar. I have never seen a Belmondo film before, but he models himself on Bogart and that is no bad thing. Also, he makes smoking look excellent.
