zoelat

When I'm feeling grumpy, I like to relax at a movie....today's choice, this one, was a poor choice. "z grade" movies are often fun, in their awfulness; This was just plain bad without the fun. See it by all means, and everything you guess is just about to happen, really DOES happen. Not one unexpected twist or turn in the whole piece. Samuel L Jackson needs a better agent, because his current adviser should have talked him out of this movie! The opening sequence is striking, in more ways than one. The best actor is a little dog...be afraid, be very afraid (not of the dog, but of the movie and its other actors). There was an item on our radios in New Zealand that some "prankster" had released two live snakes -- diamond-backed rattlesnakes -- in the theatre at Phoenix, Arizona, during a screening on the opening weekend, This was, perhaps, a novel idea but certainly a stupid and very dangerous one. By some miracle, no one in the theatre was injured and both snakes were captured and later released in the desert. One was captured in the car park, so it can be assumed that the snake was just appalled at the standard of the movie his or her cousins were acting in, and just couldn't stay long enough to bite anyone!

This is a movie which will go straight into "best monster movies" lists; it is ground-breaking in the way humorous and horror content has been intertwined by a master film director. It was the closing film, shown last night (July 30) in the Auckland International Film Festival. There was a packed house of which about 60% were Korean people living in New Zealand. The audience was very attentive and the reception given to the movie was justly big applause. The animatronic effects have been done scrupulously well and viewers can look forward to being enthralled by the skills of those who "made the monster". We got the print which had come straight from Cannes and apparently the film opened just two days before we saw it in Auckland. There is no doubt that this movie will go on to do very big business wherever people appreciate great horror films. My inclination to rate it 10/10 was tempered only by a little doubt about the pacing of some sequences, but it is certainly worth 9/10. Look out for when it comes to a theater near you.

At the heart of a "sixty-somethings" man's life, there is often a yearning for a return to those places which pleased or fascinated him in earlier years (believe me, I know!). This Chinese gentle man (gentleman, too) is determined to go back to his early workplace, while his daughter has wished him to accept the stodgy anonymity of early old age. His odyssey leads him into complications which are never less than fascinating and the director, Zhu Wen, has captured the frustrations and acceptance of the barriers which surround the lead actor. This is a movie which will never feature on most people's "top twenty", but it is an engaging and enthralling look at what most men and women will encounter as they progress through middle age, even if the demands shown on this character are more than the average person will need to cope with!

During the 1980's, no director fascinated me and often frustrated me more than Tarkovsky, the Russian who added a new dimension to the viewing requirements of an audience. His wonderful "Solaris", his incredibly slow and drawn-out "Stalker", his magnificent "Andrei Rublev" and his demanding and enigmatic "Sacrifice" were all noteworthy in that no-one who saw any of them could, I believe, ever forget them, as the viewer grappled, for years to come, on what Tarkovsky had sought and/or achieved. With "Dealer", we have the movie which has probably the best soundtrack I have encountered. The purr of a cat fills the theatre with stereo magnificence and a "whistling wind" sounds backgrounds almost every minute of the movie. It never dominates the story, but it enhances the slow deliberation on the ever-swirling camera, which advances and retreats on the actor and which is a marvelous call for intense concentration by the viewer. An audience who was not prepared to concentrate would probably call "Dealer" too slow or ponderous; absolutely not!: it shows the true poetry of cinema which is all too rarely encountered. Full marks to the director and the actors for creating what I consider one of the best movies I have seen in years...and I see a huge number of movies.

Everyone seems to know just where they were when they heard of a few very special events...The first landing on the moon, the death of JFK, the death of Bobby Kennedy, the death of Princess Di, and this is another of them. I was touring Europe with my family and we were unpacking the car at a camp on Lido de Iesolo, the mainland beside Venice. The news over the car radio was enough for us to pause for several minutes as we digested the enormity of the event. There have been several good documentaries on TV or in the movie houses about the death of Martin Luther King. I think that this is the best one I have seen. We were lucky enough to have one of the directors to hold a Q&A session after the screening at the Auckland Int'l Film Festival this year; I asked him the question "Did you just think of the title as an apt one or did you think of its correlation to "Citizen Kane" and also another movie "Citizen Cohn"...about Roy Cohn"?" The director, Nolan Walker, spoke eloquently about the correlation and said that MLK was not only a citizen of the USA but was a citizen of the world and that he tried his best to improve the world. I think the majority would agree with that. The film was very well edited, with a lot of the major players in the years prior to 1968 taking part in the movie, although Coretta did not take part. It dealt, fairly and well, with the controversial parts of King's life, such as his womanising. The packed audience was enthralled by the documentary and by Nolan Walker's eloquence afterwards.

Now I know what people mean when they say "it's better to watch paint drying"...it commits the cardinal sin of film-making: it is extremely boring! An explosive finish (NO spoilers!) does not redeem the boredom of almost two hours of nothingness. The couple, neither of whom is physically attractive, drive...and drive...and drive...the only interspersed action intends itself to be sensual, or arousingly sexual. The movie does not succeed on either level. I just did not care what happened to them. I almost walked out about five times (as others did) but I very rarely do that on any movie. I should have on this occasion.

I have, only recently, become appreciative of Korean films (another fine one is "Memories of Murder") and, when I saw a dvd available for "Oldboy" and had read of its recent awards, I bought the SE set... The quirky beginning irritated me, but I soon got into the mood of the film and no holds were barred in my total attention to every frame of the movie. It is a masterpiece of directing and editing. Every frame either holds relevance to a previous point of the film or relevance to what will come later on. I was so impressed that I have also purchased the director's presvious film, "Sympathy for Mr Vengeance" and I look forward to watching that dvd soon.

I have, only recently, become appreciative of Korean films (another fine one is "Memories of Murder") and, when I saw a dvd available for "Oldboy" and had read of its recent awards, I bought the SE set... The quirky beginning irritated me, but I soon got into the mood of the film and no holds were barred in my total attention to every frame of the movie. It is a masterpiece of directing and editing. Every frame either holds relevance to a previous point of the film or relevance to what will come later on. I was so impressed that I have also purchased the director's presvious film, "Sympathy for Mr Vengeance" and I look forward to watching that dvd soon.

I have seen this movie today and was very pleased with it, having thought that "Kill Bill Vol 1" was magnificent. Uma Thurman's performance is top-notch, as is that of David Carradine; I have never been more impressed by any previous performance by Michael Madsen as by the one he delivers here....well done!! It is intriguing to note that "imdb" itself lists the running time as 136 minutes, while "Rotten Tomatoes" gives it as 130 minutes; in New Zealand it is screening at 138 minutes, so perhaps our censor has passed some extra footage which was cut out in other countries. The NZ censor has been doing a good job over recent years.

I saw this today, as a "double feature" with "Trinity and Beyond", which is a marvellous history of the US nuclear bomb tests. It is an ideal way to get a sobering look at not only the horrors that were held up as the "protection of the world" but at the folly that took us all to the brink of destruction. "Atomic filmmakers" is breathtaking in observing the risks which were taken by the men (and women?) who were prepared to expose themselves to all sorts of unknown results from the hundreds of atomic explosions they filmed. To see them standing out in the open, only a few miles from the "ground zero" is astonishing. One of them is a man who lost several relatives in the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki! While "Atomic Cafe" is a fascinating and often hilarious look at the nuclear arms race, there is NOTHING funny about these two movies, but they are equally compelling.

Having seen this movie today, I can only feel sorry that the user comments used on the main page is so negative....the viewer must have been having a bad day or been in a restless mood, because the movie I saw, with two other filmgoers, was thought by all of us to have been excellent......poignant, moving and enthralling, but NEVER dull, let alone "painfully dull". I shall be watching out for a dvd of it.

For years I have been fascinated by the work of John Malkovich, most recently by "Ripley's Game", in which his acting was nothing short of superb; it astounds me that you movie-lovers in the USA should have, so far, been deprived of a release for that excellent movie...it is now available on dvd (diabolikdvd.com) so I urge his admirers to view that dvd. It was with great hopes that I went yesterday to see his first directorial job, "The Dancer Upstairs" and it is a thrill to report that I found it to be a gripping film with a wonderful performance by the great Javier Bardem. In 1993 I spent one month in South America, including some time in Peru; our tour group was among the first to visit Peru after the great dramas involving the terrorism by, and the downfall of, the "Shining Path" group. The country was still very tense and our group was made to feel very welcome because we had "trusted Peru" to treat us safely. My viewing of this movie was thus poignant for me, as I was anxious to see how Malkovich and Shakespeare had handled the attitudes of the people...of course I realise that the film was shot in Ecuador rather than Peru and that I was observing the director's and author's styles, so I was delighted to be favourably impressed by both. The opening sequence gave a very optimistic pointer to the skills of Malkovich and, by and large, he covered himself with a great deal of credit throughout. There were a few "non sequiturs" in the story (NO SPOILERS),so perhaps Mr Shakespeare left a few loose ends, but I really do hope that John Malkovich is given more directing jobs in years ahead, as I think he shows a great deal of talent. Incidentally, I have always hoped to see another movie directed by Kevin Spacey, after the fine job he did on "Albino Alligator".

I have just seen this film in the Auckland Film Festival and, having been to the wonderful Hermitage Museum last year, was really looking forward to seeing it. As I expected a straight-forward "tour" of the fabulous Museum, I was unprepared for the unusual way the director has presented the piece; having said that, I liked it a lot and was filled with admiration that the director had been able to sustain a single take for the entire 95 minutes of the film! Musically it is excellent and I can, with my hand on my heart, say that no film has impressed me more highly for many years, in its costumes. They are simply astonishing and must have cost a fortune. I can recommend the film with some reservations about the sometimes rambling narration; but any film dealing with this wonderful place would be a must-see for me. I would give it 7.5 out of 10