My Blueberry Nights (Hong Kong-China-France, 2007)

Wong Kar Wai’s first English-language films had a lukewarm reception and if it’s not quite as good as his Hong Kong movies, this still has some wondrous moments. After the elliptical 2046 (2004) and the frustrating In the Mood for Love (2000), My Blueberry Nights marks a return to the fast food loners of Chungking [...]

JCVD (Belguim, Luxembourg, France, 2008)

It’s very difficult for action heroes to get thespian credibility; Sylvester Stallone got some for Copland (1997) but I can’t imagine Keanu Reeves ever receiving a nice sounding gong. Jean-Claude van Damme lives, as a movie star, in straight-to-video land mostly. He surfaced most prominently in John Woo’s first Hollywood film Hard Target (1993) but [...]

The Age of Stupid (UK, 2009)

This is a quite brilliant documentary about the disaster of climate change that capitalism cannot possibly do anything about as it’s, as the film states, predicated on expansion and when you’ve only one planet of resources… An SF framing device places an archivist, Pete Postlethwaite, in 2055 looking back at the ‘age of stupid’ – [...]

The Good German (US, 2006)

Blanchett, Clooney, film noir and Soderbergh: should have been good; but it wasn’t. This is a pastiche of Hollywood noir, obvious from the title credits, and Clooney’s Jake Geismer gets battered as much as his namesake in Chinatown (1974) – also a pastiche. Similarly Berlin just after the end of World War II is a [...]

Paranoid Park (France-US, 2007)

I found it difficult to care for the characters in this film, usually a fatal problem for a movie unless it’s a popcorn roller-coaster pic. It’s Gus van Sant’s use of non-professionals, ranging for okay to terrible, that alienated me from the film; this isn’t a problem in itself as he did the same in [...]

State of Play (US-UK, 2009)

The remake of the excellent BBC political thriller from 2003 deftly transfers the narrative to Washington DC and updates the ’state of the nation’ message. The original six-parter had nearly six hours to play with, however the necessary compression is skilfully wrought though the motivation of the politicians is less clear in the film.
Kevin MacDonald’s [...]

Sweet Smell of Success (US, 1957)

Script by Odets and Lehman; cinematography by James Wong Howe; music by Elmer Bernstein; direction by Alexander Mackendrick; starring Lancaster and Curtis; need I say more? An absolute classic that remains thoroughly modern in its depiction of the corruption of celebrity culture. Lancaster does evil with a one-note demeanor (mean) and Curtis’ Sidney Falco oozes [...]

Donkey Punch (UK, 2008)

It’s good to see British genre movies competing with Hollywood; unfortunately they need to be better than this; imdb.com notes the film took £22 one weekend. What’s wrong with it? I’m not best placed to answer as it’s aimed at a younger demographic however I think, though it sets up the situation well, the denoument [...]

There Will Be Blood (US, 2007)

My students have been telling me to watch this film for the last 18 months; don’t know why it took me so long to get to it as Day Lewis is one of my favourites, as is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999). Much as enjoyed the direction, some terrific long takes that took in much [...]

Red Sorghum (Hong gao liang, China, 1987)

Zhang Yimou is probably the most-watched, worldwide, Chinese director as he orchestrated the opening ceremony at last year’s Beijing Olympics. He’s also had some ‘cross-over’ success with Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004). Red Sorghum was his first film as a director and the visuals are stunning, though the stylisation, in the two [...]