Tweet (Review Update) I wrote this review when the marathon 8 year, 154 episode series of the The West Wing came to an end. Even during its live run, the story-lines of the TWW eerily paralleled the actual events, challenges and moral debates at the heart of real American politics. That it managed to maintain […]
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Tweet Gone Baby Gone – Ben Affleck All the subtlety, and nuance so notably missing from Ben Affleck’s wooden pretty-boy acting can be found in this impressive directorial debut. It was clear from the Oscar success of Good Will Hunting 10 years ago, that Affleck and Matt Damon penned and starred in, that Affleck could […]
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TweetMost of the words in this poem are Wittgenstein’s. I have only tried to organise them into poetic form and create linkages to help that enterprise. Zettel Just Words The world is all that is the case the totality of facts not things The limits of my language are the limits of my world I […]
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Tweet The World’s Fastest Indian – Roger Donaldson Spontaneous applause broke out in the cinema at the end of this movie. It’s been a long time since I heard that. And it was fully justified. This film is genuinely sentimental, warm-hearted, gentle, nostalgic, very funny and moving. Its dramatic climax is as tense and exciting […]
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Tweet There Will Be Blood – Paul Thomas Anderson Two attitudes to winning: the first relishes excellence, pride, victory; the second delights in an opponent’s defeat and relishes dominance and supremacy. Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) wants to defeat others because he can’t bear someone else to win. Plainview enters the film as a man with […]
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Tweet Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Shane Black (BBC Prize Review) Pulp Fiction? Give me a break. This off the wall, can’t be pigeon-holed, literate little gem has far more style, wit, laughs and ironic self-mockery in its little finger (which the dog eats by the way). Lets hear it for Mary Gail Artz and […]
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Tweet City of Blues The city of blues is cryin’ bitter tears of shame it’s the rich that gets the buses the poor that gets the blame White WASP’s buzzin’ bull shit disgracin’ America’s name The city of blues is dyin’ black is now death’s name the rich escape to safety the rest just lose […]
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Tweet Pan’s Labyrinth – Guillermo del Torro How shall innocence respond to evil? How can the dominance of power be resisted or even defeated? Timeless questions del Torro explores in his stunning allegorical tale. But be warned, this is a dark, at times brutally explicit vision. Historically human beings have responded to these fundamental questions […]
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Tweet In The Cut – Jane Campion Reviews of Jane Campion’s In The Cut have been shamefully grudging. Always an interesting Director, her intriguing, challenging film has been dreadfully served by Distributors. This is surprising for a bad reason as it is, briefly, perhaps the most sexually explicit movie so far in main line cinema […]
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Tweet Transamerica – Duncan Tucker There is an extraordinary, perhaps unique moment late on in Duncan Tucker’s Transamerica. Felicity Huffman’s transsexual Stan/ ‘Bree’ has finally had the radical gender-reassignment surgery he/she has longed for all his/her life. The week-long deferment of this operation is the dramatic space in which this fascinating, most unusual film takes […]
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