Category: Movies

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The best of 2006

~ Inquisitor

I’m not doing a best of list for new music 2006 because I have heard too little of it (being away in Germany during prime release season does that to you). Movies, however, I’ve seen a lot more of, so here’s some of the best of the year (and sorry about not reviewing them at the time):

  • A Bittersweet Life – OK, so it’s no Oldboy, but this Korean tale of a mob enforcer having a fatal mid-life crisis is still kinetic, occasionally daft, visually stunning and extremely watchable. Fans of black humour and suddenly unleashed screen brutality will find much to enjoy here.
  • Borat – No, it’s not tasteful. Yes, it is funny. And it has a Laurel and Hardy visual gag, which makes up for everything. Fun Easter egg: which language is it that Borat is speaking to his assistant?
  • Casino Royale – At last, the Bond producers have listened to what fans have been saying for ages and brought Bond back to earth, and got a decent screenwriter (Paul Haggis) in to do it too instead of Purvis and Wade. If the next one’s more like this than Die Another Day I’ll be very very pleased. [Also, those danielcraigisnotbond people really need to go figure.]
  • Children Of Men – It’s fantastic dystopian SF from a very British point of view. The scenes of day-to-day life in this movie have more resonance than all of the sadly over-Hollywoodised V for Vendetta. Alfonso Cuaron directs some stunning multi-minute apparent single takes. And Clive Owen is forced into acting, which is worth the cost of the movie alone.
  • Clerks II – It could have been a complete waste of time, but unfortunately for Kevin Smith haters it turned out to be very, very funny. My favourite Smith film is still Chasing Amy, and I accept his limitations as a director, but he does know how to construct a good running gag and this has some very, very good ones. Also, he has got better.
  • The Departed – No, it’s not as good as Infernal Affairs (which it is a pretty much expanded remake of) but it’s still really good and it’s still Scorcese. It’ll be a shame to see him denied the Oscar again, but if he gets it I’ll be cheering.
  • Good Night And Good Luck – It could have been a vanity project, but George Clooney is a very good director and he didn’t let it happen. Beautifully shot in black and white, with its moral compass very much in shades of grey.
  • The Host – Truly wonderful Korean horror with an initially dodgy monster and a serious case of genre confusion, expanding through horror, black comedy, political satire, slapstick, melodrama and countdown-clock thriller. As an added bonus, the hero’s search for his daughter is often thwarted by the most nasty case of unhelpful bureaucracy since Brazil.
  • Pan’s Labyrinth – Guillermo del Toro’s adult fairytale manages to evoke both time and timeless within its short runtime. Beautiful film, fantastic child performances, and a very convincing look at the realities of the Spanish Civil War lie within.
  • The Proposition – A beautifully savage, brutally adult “Australian Western”; Ray Winstone and Guy Pearce especially stand out here amongst a sprawling ensemble cast of some of the best actors in European and Australian cinema. Very well written by, yes, that Nick Cave.

Movies that I liked much more than I should have: Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Sorry. And V for Vendetta, despite my review.

Things I really should have seen: Far too many; I missed the summer season (everything was dubbed in my part of Germany, aaargh). At the very least: Superman Returns, United 93, Inside Man, An Inconvenient Truth, Snakes on a Plane.

Awful awful movies: Thankfully nothing I can recall. Hopefully it’ll stay that way long into 2007.

Golden Globe nominations

~ Inquisitor

It’s as per usual: lots of films we haven’t seen, having been released for One Week Only in New York and LA in order to qualify. Interesting spots: the amazing Chiwetel Ejiofor for Best Comedic Actor (for Kinky Boots, which he was by far the best thing in), two Leo DiCaprios for Best Dramatic Actor (Blood Diamond and The Departed), two Clint Eastwoods for Director (his Iwo Jima pair), lots of nominations for Inarittu’s Babel, good nominations for Dreamgirls and The Departed, Apocalypto and Eastwood’s Japanese-language Iwo Jima film for Best Foreign Language (Pan’s Labyrinth should win) and Borat in the best musical/comedy section.

On this evidence, the Oscars should be interesting this year- and much harder to predict than usual (except Scorcese not getting it, which is becoming close to an unfortunate yearly event.)

RIP Basil Poledouris

~ Inquisitor

Basil Poledouris, composer of many great film scores (especially for Paul Verhoeven) has died of cancer. Ain’t-It-Cool-News and his official messageboard pay tribute. I guess I will too.

The importance of a good film score can never be underestimated – what would Star Wars be without John Williams’ fanfares? The Omen without the Jerry Goldsmith score? Or a Tim Burton movie, Ed Wood excepted, without Danny Elfman? Completely unimaginable (or in the case of The Omen, just wrong).

And Robocop quite possibly would be undeservedly seen as just a bog-standard B-movie if it wasn’t for Basil Poledouris’s brilliantly bombastic and, most importantly, easily recognisable overture; the perfect music for the material, pushing its satirical intent to the fore. It’s a fantastic score, one of many; in this age of identikit wannabe-Hans Zimmers, he will be missed.

Heads up in the digital milieu #1: 25 October 2006

~ Inquisitor

[The first in a semi-recurring series of good things spotted in the little minutiae of British multichannel TV listings, inspired by spotting an interesting for-cinema documentary on a digital channel soon after release…]

  • “KZ“, a documentary about Mauthausen concentration camp and the townspeople Then and Now, has recently done the art cinema rounds and is already on TV: More4 9:00pm (+1 10:00pm).
  • The first two episodes of “Torchwood” air on terrestrial; I saw it on BBC3 and didn’t actually mind it, it looks promising and is at least interesting: BBC2 9:00pm.
  • Channel Four are having an early Halloween – “Misery” followed by Carpenter’s “The Fog“: Channel 4 11:10pm/Thu 1:10am.

With over 100 channels on Telewest Essential, this had better become a regular occurrence.

Adaptations

~ Inquisitor

Some sad news that I've only just discovered: Jay Presson Allen, the screenwriter of many fine adaptations, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Cabaret, died on the 1st of May.

Cabaret in particular is a masterpiece of adaptation: it changes quite a lot of the original musical whilst keeping very much to its theme (and the best of the songs), and thus becoming a lot less stagey and quite tremendously watchable. The adaptation by Jay Presson Allen is defintely one of the reasons why this works; it puts forth the correct, disturbing mood for the material. It's the benchmark for how to adapt a musical to film, a genre that's never quite been done correctly; only the best writers, like Allen and the late, great Ernest Lehman, working with the best directors really got it.

I'll leave this with Sally Bowles…

Does it really matter as long as you're having fun?

Movie Catch-Up #2: “V For Vendetta”

~ Inquisitor ~ 7 Comments

V for Vendetta is splitting audiences right down the middle. Alan Moore took his name off after reading the script. David Lloyd, on the other hand, quite likes it. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian gave it a thorough hammering, Philip French in the Observer felt it was clever, handsome but “pompous”, but most of the participants at Harry Knowles’s film festival (where it was first shown) unreservedly loved it.

I’m with Philip French, and in this review I aim to explain why. Major spoilers after the break for those who haven’t read the comic or seen the movie; necessary, unfortunately, for a discussion on where the movie both succeeds and fails. Continue reading “Movie Catch-Up #2: “V For Vendetta”” →