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Reviews
Gimme Shelter (1970)
It used to be a lot more than Only Rock'n'Roll
When you see this movie you really understand how sanitised, safe and corporate the music scene is today.
The Stones were possibly the biggest band in the world at the time, so by today's standards it seems unbelievable they'd put on a free concert where the venue was changed at the last minute, the set was still being constructed as the 300,000 very fried looking hippies turned up, and there was no security for their satanic majesties except for the San Francisco Hell's Angels who were paid in beer and brought along pool cues with lead weights at the end for added security - as well as the standard knives and baseball bats. And they weren't afraid to use them, even on the bands, especially Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin.
Throw in some of the original Satanic rock band's finest sinister creations and you get the real deal, not some pantomime metal/goth horror facsimile. At the time many people really did believe that they could change the world and looked to bands like the Stones as leaders of the counterculture, and you really get the impression things like this mattered a hell of a lot more, but after Altamont, well...
Nevertheless, the version of Under My Thumb that Jagger delivers as he's watching the terrible action unfold in front of him is, for whatever reason, devastatingly understated and desperate, compared to all the OTT cavorting earlier in the set. But it's the genuine craziness of the 'fans' that makes this film seem like it was shot on another planet. Gimme Shelter is the most rock'n'roll film ever made, for all the right and wrong reasons.
Across the Universe (2007)
why would anyone want to make such a bad movie?
i can just imagine the pitch to the studio for this movie...
pitch: OK...we're gonna remake Hair for the new millennium.
studio: who'll buy that? it's 4o years after the fact. it's totally irrelevant. it's clichéd and cheesy. the ending is depressing.
pitch: well, we're gonna take out all the depressing bits, tag on a happy ending. we won't even need to hire a scriptwriter!
studio: great. but we'll have to commission someone to write a soundtrack.
pitch: no we won't we'll crib the beatles.
studio: how will that work?
pitch: well, when you see a revolution going on we'll sing 'revolution', when there's a guy called Jude we'll sing 'hey jude', we'll sing 'strawberryfields forever' when you see some, er, strawberries.
studio: great. just one thing.
pitch: what's that?
studio: can you put bono in it?
pitch: sure.
i'm sorry if you like this movie. i really am.
The Living and the Dead (2006)
Horrific!
This is possibly the worst film i have ever seen. I actually saw the premiere in Rotterdam Film Festival, and whilst many people walked out I stayed to the bitter end. But that was mainly because I didn't want to lose my friends. Self indulgent is a word often overused in the arts, and some of the best music and film is incredibly self indulgent, but behind that indulgence there is often genius. Unfortunately here there is nothing, not even a plot. The mistake the director Simon Rumley makes is to dwell on the suffering of the characters, all in a kind of 'gross out' adolescent way, without any insight, or any freshness. All the best films now tend not to be so mawkish, making The Living and The Dead seem like a bad student project from the 1970s. There's no lightness of touch here and no humour. Perhaps we're supposed to laugh at mentalist James in the same way we laugh at Julian Donkey Boy. But he's just not that funny and he has none of the demented hilarity of Donkey Boy. Like the rest of the cast, he's just a stereotype, an extremely annoying stereotype. All you'll learn from The Living and The Dead is that some people clearly have much more money than sense. And I'm not talking about any of the characters in the film here.
The Descent (2005)
Frighteningly bad
Getting 6 women lost in an unchartered cave with the land based equivalent of creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean isn't a bad idea for a film. But that's as far as The Descent should have got. The monsters aren't scary, they're cocks. And the film's actually more effective before they arrive. A lot more could have been made of why they were there etc, because their introduction is about as subtle as the musical score. Perhaps if they were a little more terrifying, the melodramatic orchestral bursts whenever one of the Dr Who type goons appears wouldn't have seemed so inappropriate. On the positive side, the cave claustrophobia is effective and there's a nice broken leg scene. Apart from that it's all a bit crap really.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Wahey! It's the gay Easy Rider!
After the first 10 minutes i feared the worst for this film: the kinda gay drama you've seen a million times before with struggles about coming to terms with homosexuality and lingering shots of naked men by streams. Luckily it got better and turned into a nice understated drama with a lightness of touch I didn't expect. Like Easy Rider, it's Rednecks oppressing a couple of 'weirdos', with lots of beautiful nature shots thrown in and a struggle for the inner soul. But they're not smuggling drugs, they're smuggling homosexuality! You don't have to be gay to enjoy this film. I'm not gay and neither is my flatmate Tobias but we enjoyed it. And so did Malin but she is gay. I wouldn't give it 10 normally, probably 7, but I only give films 10 or 1 so I had to give it 10.
Dogville (2003)
Welcome to America!
The race riots of the early 90's startled the majority of Americans. Why should citizens of such a great democracy want to destroy it? However, what I personally found surprising about the whole situation was the aftermath of the violence, and how nearly all the commentators failed to realize that implicit racism was at the heart of the problem, and while the American Dream may be open to some, to most it will remain just that, a dream. Put simply, if you marginalize and exploit a minority, should you be surprised if it begins to feel disenfranchised, and acts accordingly?
The narrative style of Dogville is like a storybook, with dry observations from the commentator. It's very reminiscent of Animal Farm too. What Orwell did for the USSR, Von Trier does for the USA. But whereas Animal Farm is all about the exploitation of the worker, Dogville is about the exploitation of the minorities that make up the underclass in America. Which, of course, is what Grace (Nicole Kidman)and her increasing oppression at the hands of the Americans represents. As a political allegory, you can't pay Dogville any higher compliment than a comparison with Orwell. Although Orwell was primarily a political writer, you never feel you are being preached to in his novels. And you get the same feeling with Dogville too. It's only with the 'subtle change in light' when Grace finally sees what a rotten place Dogville is and allows her Godlike father(James Caan)to act accordingly.
It's interesting that it takes a Scandinavian to see America for what it has been, and to some extent, still is. Perhaps this film is the powerful wake up call America needs. Perhaps the next time there's a 'subtle change in light' there will be a similar change in political thinking and institutions. And the use of Bowie's Young Americans in the closing titles, to pictures of the oppressed through America's recent history, clarifies the point that no matter how bad things are, even during the Great Depression, there is no excuse for exploitation. This film should be compulsory viewing for schoolchildren everywhere.
Get Carter (1971)
Better than Godfather
If there can be anything such as a 'generic genre', then the great British gangster film must be it. But don't blame Get Carter for this, blame Madge's husband, Guy Ritchie. I saw Get Carter again recently and it must be the least dated film from the seventies ever made. This is largely because the situations, characters, settings and even fashions are so slice of life. It's a lot more convincing than a lot of the Sean Penn stuff at the moment, and even hyper-real stuff like Gummo or Julian Donkey Boy. I think this is because there's no exaggeration in Get Carter. It's not shot in some weird hicky town in the middle of nowhere, it's shot in Newcastle, one of the UK's major cities. And Get Carter tells it like it is. It is this no-nonsense style that still makes it look one of the coolest films around. Also, there aren't any heroes, which is a good thing. Well, how many 'heroes' have you met? Carter, though no hero, is a great character, make no mistake about that, and he shows just enough emotion for the audience to identify with him: like when he stumbles across his dead brother's daughter in some seedy porn film, and the whole motivation for his revenge mission in the first place. But he is a cold blooded killer too, hardened by London's gangland, and violence is his main emotional outlet in everything else - sex etc - he's pretty cool. It's not just the killers he's after, it's anyone even associated with it. And he dispatches them with a passion. "I know you didn't kill him!! I know!!" and "Goodbye ----!!" being two memorable sign offs. I really do believe this is a better film than Godfather. Godfather exists in a world most of us will never experience and is one of the best Hollywood films. Get Carter though, exists in our world, and the superb characters, acting and writing make it totally believable - even when Michael Caine walks naked out of the door of his seedy B & B with his shotgun to escort out some local hoods, the most memorable thing you remember about the scene is the previously belligerent moaning old lady neighbour scurrying into her house, terrified. Oh, and Budd's soundtrack is pure sleazy brilliance, well up to the standard of virtually everything else about the film.
Along Came Polly (2004)
pretentious rubbish
This is my friend Erik's favourite film.He took us all along to see it because he thought it was a really funny intelligent comedy. He pretty well laughed all through the movie. But no one else was laughing. He likes it because the diving instructor's got a funny Italian accent. Not forgetting the blind ferret that crashes into stationary objects. He was so funny they used him in the poster! And there's a close up slow-mo of Stiller getting his face rubbed up against some sweaty hairy fat basketball player's armpit. Ermmm, that's about it. I'd imagine fans of films like Dumb and Dumberer, Shallow Hal and Magnolia might like it.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Dry
I don't normally goto action films but I'd already seen the other films at the cinema - Eternal Sunshine is wonderful, Manchurian Candidate not so good - but this film was a huge surprise. Yes, it looks beautiful, but the dialogue and acting easily match the special effects. Some have commented that the characters are dull and the lines uninspiring, but they seem to miss the point that the film's a spoof of 1940s British comic books and cinema. The speaking of the obvious, the contrived escapes, the meaningful sideways glances and the understatement of Jude'n'Gwyneth all send up old school stiff-upper-lip English adventure yarns with great aplomb.
It is, in fact, a very English film: why emote like J-Lo when a raised eyebrow will do? Sky Captain is certainly big on eyebrows. And Jude Law's are great!
Magnolia (1999)
pompous
If this film was a piece of music it would be Fanfare for the Common Man by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, a work so consumed by its own self-importance it can't actually see that what it's saying is, errrrm, not very much. Coincidences happen. And the film's introductory story - about the kid who jumps off the roof the moment his dad shoots through the window and gets hit by the bullet - is far more interesting than anything the rest of the film has to offer. The po-faced hand-wringing indulgence is just terrible, climaxing in possibly the most annoying and cheesy scene I've ever seen in a film, when all the characters sing the same Amy Mann song at the same time - get it, by coincidence! American Beauty, which came out about the same time is a much more interesting study of how disparate characters are thrown together, a film with an altogether lighter touch, as opposed to Magnolia's BLUDGEON!!!!!