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VinnieTheDog
Reviews
Bedazzled (1967)
The Ultimate Divine Comedy.
I love this film so much that it makes me want to weep just thinking about it. It is the most wonderful example of my favourite genre which I categorise as "Divine Comedy"; (think Life of Brian, the Toy Story's) comedies based on moral themes, religious preoccupations, consciousness etc. Emotional satire would be another way of putting it.
It has a head start by being based on my favourite play which is Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, but it takes this to unprecedented heights of clever, thought-provoking and most of all hilarious genius. In my opinion, (and I write screenplays for a living), this is the funniest, cleverest screenplay ever written. It's a real "We-are-not-worthy" experience to watch it...
...which I do again and again, and can't help but suffocate with laughter and I recommend that you watch it several times too, because every line is a magic bullet and you just can't take them in in one go.
It seems that it's not just the best tunes that the devil gets.
Little Armadillos (1984)
The best kept secret in comedy history
I loved this show. I used to actually leave the pub ten minutes before closing and run down the road to catch it. I remember Daniel Peacock's sketch about Gandhi in the newsagents as a masterpiece. The set design and lighting were out of this world, creating an atmosphere that you felt you were actually living in. V unusual for a comedy.
Unfortunately I have only encountered one other person (apart from the other reviewer here) who ever knew that this programme existed. In fact I have to thank the IMDb for coming into existence and proving to me that I hadn't in fact imagined the whole series in a drunken haze, which I was seriously starting to believe!
Pearl Harbor (2001)
Low Expectations - Great Entertainment
What is the critics' problem with this picture? It at no time sets itself up to be Ibsen, so they shouldn't be surprised that it does exactly what it promises on the poster - provide a professional, superbly made, three hours of entertainment with absolutely brain-popping special effects! If you want art, go to a gallery. The first moving picture that charged admission was simply a film of a train coming into a station. It made a fortune. The point here is that the movies were never designed to be an art form, they are intrinsically a special effect, an entertainment, and this film delivers that sumptuously. Having seen it, I don't know how they managed to make it for $150,000,000!
Cube (1997)
A low-budget masterpiece.
A magnificently simple but effective idea that not only allows a low budget format, but actually uses that format as it's main strength. By my guessing it's very loosely suggested by the Avengers classic 'House that Jack Built', but uses a very basic springboard idea from that story to give a gripping, claustrophobic and character-strong narrative on the basic conundrums like Why are we here? What are we supposed to do about it? How do we master our own personalities and Why the Hell is everything so terrifying? Go see what can be done with probably less Canadian Dollars than it takes to furnish John Travolta's Winnebago.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
A Magnificent, Captivating Failure.
I have to declare myself as a Kubrick disciple since I saw 2001 when I was 12. I actually burst out into tears in public when I heard he'd died. So I can say that I was almost too scared to see this movie in case it disappointed. As a piece of work it is utterly beguiling. From the opening frames he once again transports you into a world all of his own and which you seem to yearn to return to once released from it. That is what he did like no other filmmaker ever.
But is it a good film? I think that Stanley actually trod on a bit of a mine with this. Having made the definitive films dealing with many other genres, he had obviously brooded for 20 years on bringing that same dispassionate, yet disturbingly vibrant eye to sex. And I get the conclusion from this film that he is ultimately disallusioned with cornering his prey. Where war, space and psychopathy render huge revalations and insights by his 'freeze' treatment, I get the impression that the conclusion he comes to in the end, is that the subject matter is found wanting of drama. In short, that sex is ultimately boring.
I personally found this conclusion actually quite ironically humourous and therefore it didn't really ruin the film for me, but then I am a Kubrick nut!