Miami Vice (2006)

RATING:	20%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://1linereview.blogspot.com)

Dull and unimaginative crime drama from the usually-reliable Michael Mann. Featuring death-worshipping performances resulting from an under-written script and a sense that Mann is simply repeating old material from the original tv series because he has simply run out of new ideas. We get no real sense of what it is like to go undercover and deal with drug traffickers and the White supremacist subplot is imply distracting when it could make a good film in its own right.

The issue of actors playing police officers playing criminals is never meaningfully explored in a way that could have made the drama resonant and involving. And as usual with so many US crime films, the good guys and the bad guys are so mannered that you can see who the villains are from the get-go.

There is little sense of guns being fired by sentient beings, but of guns firing themselves. The tail-wagging-the-dog style just completely overwhelms the content and it is a very great shame to see the magnificent Gong LI in a bad film. Somewhere in all this mess there is a great romance, but it is lost in a welter of semi-automatic gunfire and affectless profanity.

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Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Prophete [A Prophet] (2009)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://www.totalfilm.com)

A prison effectively run by the inmates is the basis for this superb drama. The performances are uniformly excellent and the story engrossing. The French legal system, however, would appear to be endemically corrupt, yet this film evades many of the clichés of the prison genre by avoiding any sentimentality whatsoever - inevitable given the dependence of the wider culture on crime to employ so many to allegedly combat it - and to inform dramas such as this. The conclusion that prisons in the West are universities for criminals is unmistakable. That criminality and everyday life are not truly separate - nor even separable - explains the inability of curative methods in dealing with organized crime and criminals.

Alongside the fact that criminals are collectivists because they lack the cultural skills to be individualists, lies the issue that gangs soon form in prison based on ethnic origin. This matches the world of White supremacism outside the prison system; rendering this movie partly a metaphor for the outside world. Thus, the film is also a treatise on ethnic identity with a central character straddling the various cultures (Arab, Corsican, Italian) to become a prophet without a soul. It then becomes a subtle dramatic disquisition upon those who conflate business relationships with personal ones and upon those who confuse nationality with ethnicity - at the risk of their lives.

Because there is no honor among thieves, the only ethical concept of value here is loyalty - constantly tested by self-interest. The power politics is palpable throughout and you will find yourself rooting for ruthless anti-social types some of whom are never punished for their terrible crimes - only by their still-intact consciences - because, in the end, this movie is ultimately about taking sides and doing the right thing.

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Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Space Cowboys (2000)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.cultfilmfreaks.com)

Contrived and implausible; but it is all good, clean fun.

Four great performers - Clint EASTWOOD, Tommy Lee JONES, James GARNER and Donald SUTHERLAND - combine to tell a story of four old farts shot into space on a clandestine mission to arrest the decaying orbit of a fifty-ton Soviet-era satellite.

The script is under-written and the characters never really come alive, so we are left dramatically-stranded with only the SFX to admire, much more than the ostensible story.

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Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.co.uk) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Chi Bi [Red Cliff] (2008)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://filmsufi.blogspot.com)

Despite some extremely-impressive battle scenes and a clever exposition of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, this film lacks the emotional resonance that would make it the truly moving story about friendship it tries to be.

The characterization is thin and the relations between characters here equally so. Yet this film does not bore too much - despite its length.

(http://filmsufi.blogspot.com)

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Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Cross of Iron (1976)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	Cinema

(http://homecinema.thedigitalfix.com)

Fascinating and engrossing variation on the Bathsheba myth that is not so much a classic war movie as an exploration of the reasons for, and the exact nature of, class-war.

There is no alternative to such internecine conflict and the inevitable result is the need for the ruling class to be dependent on the poor to achieve its goals; the fear of poor people being that if they do not suck up to their rulers, they will either be killed or be unemployed.

The love between men in combat and for each other is very strongly presented - so much so that they seem more alive in the thick of battle than in a woman’s arms. The acting is superb as is the writing. This is a film you are very unlikely to forget in a hurry - especially because of its dark humor.

(http://homecinema.thedigitalfix.com)

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Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.co.uk) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Ulysses (1967)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.8weekly.nl/)

Brilliantly-inventive take on a brilliantly-inventive novel that vividly captures the clever wordplay of the original. Starting off with a cine-realistic style it becomes fantastical as we come to learn that Leopold Bloom is haunted by his sexual impotence and his wife's inevitable response in making him a cuckold to satisfy her resulting sexual frustration. His nightmares of sexual inadequacy are central to this drama and produce most of the humor here.

Unlike Lady Chatterley, Molly Bloom does not find fulfillment in the arms of a gamekeeper but at least her long felt want indicates the hope that continues to burn while one is still alive and which makes suicide so abhorrent.

The performances are committed from a troupe that utterly believes - quite rightly - in the quality of the material they are to embody - and fully embody it they do. The performers make the poetry seem natural when spoken and draws us into the enhanced world of James Joyce's Dublin - exaggerated to make the world in all its complexity clearer.

Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://ebruinfilmreview.blogspot.com/)

Superb film about the negative effects of living in a culture obsessed with appearance as more important than essence. Here, emotional relationships are stillborn as few learn to develop their emotional life to its fullest flowering.

The affective retardation is compared to those born brain damaged in the form of a morbid parody that’s quite funny, as parents warn against talking to strangers yet don’t treat their own children as kin if they aren’t photogenic.

Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Chariots of Fire (1981)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://soulfoodmovies.blogspot.com/)

Subtle appreciation of White supremacism from a White author – especially the anti‑Semitism. Here, Jews are shown as loyal to a White supremacist country despite the fact they are not accepted as a true Englishmen. This is tempered by the inherent nationalism of the Olympic Games; meaning that an English Jew's victory can be seen as a national victory - not the ethnic one it actually is – while his defeat would be seen as a Jewish failure only.

The characters are as very well‑defined as the situation they find themselves in; elucidating both. A devout Christian is athletically‑pitted against a Jew; making for a religious- and race‑war between men of the same nationality that their love of the sport transcends. They deal with their additional inner conflicts of running to overcome their fear of winning and of being the best – all to the music of Vangelis and Gilbert & Sullivan.

Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Delicatessen (1991)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://5plitreel.wordpress.com/)

Like Big Meat Eater and Texas Chainsaw Massacre before it, this is a paean to vegetarianism. This is a dystopian science-fiction movie of which the Demon Barber of Fleet Street would approve as a shortage of meat for the butcher creates a market to satisfy the cravings of anthropophagous carnivores.

(Image: http://5plitreel.wordpress.com/)

This is visually interesting but thematically weak – Terry GILLIAM with a touch of Russ MEYER. Despite the high quality actors on show, they are in the grip of the general, all round weirdness and can make little headway with deepening their characterizations beyond the trite. Nevertheless, as a love story of the possibility of escape from poor parenting into a world of happiness and fulfillment it just about makes sense.

(Image: http://5plitreel.wordpress.com/)

Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.