Friday, 30 November 2012

Io non ho paura
[I’m Not Scared]
(2003)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Age of Innocence

Containing original genius, a tale of lost childhood innocence as a young boy finds his parents’ feet of clay. His best friend revealing a secret he’d promised to keep matches this sense of betrayal yet, at the end, the boy discovers the value of the true friendship that comes from shared experience and self-sacrifice.

Told from the point-of-view of rural children, into whose world we’re fully immersed from the outset. The age-old battle between parents and their offspring is represented by a terrible secret the adults strive to conceal, while their children’s innate curiosity and fearlessness eventually reveals all. As the children want parents they can admire, so the parents hope their children have nothing to reproach them for.

Unpredictable, yet inevitable, as all good thrillers should be; the conclusion is truly stunning.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Hurt Locker
(2008)

RATING:60%
FORMAT:DVD



A film without political context has little to focus upon other than the emotional life of the characters. Because the wartime situation in which these characters find themselves has been explored - and explored better - before, we are left with neither political insight nor psychological.

It is hard to see the point of this movie since it offers little in the way of information about the current situation in Iraq nor does it propound any sagacity about war, as such. The characters are damaged by their experiences but the sight of corpses, especially young ones, is bound to have that affect - so what else is new and different?

Enjoyable but pointlessly bland, stylistically cliché and containing characterizations that are a little too flat to make this anything other than run-of-the-mill - Full Metal Jacket said it so much more eloquently.


Copyright © 2012 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.

How Green was my Valley
(1941)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Happy-Go-Lucky

Although this is Hollywood-Wales, there is enough authenticity here to make this treat well worth watching. The accents vary - which is strange for such a close-knit community - but is a product of the fact that few actors seem able to master a Welsh accent with alacrity.

Despite the National Geographic approach to the Celtic ethnicity, as though they were members of a strange, foreign tribe of happy-go-lucky types unsullied by the cynicism so prevalent in Western culture, this movie gets under the skin of its characters to present a believable story with convincing characters. Emotional credibility easily trumping naturalism, realism and literalism.

John Ford’s visual sense is in strong evidence here as he employs Soviet cinema techniques to stress the grinding and backbreaking nature of the coal-miners’ working routine; while verbally criticizing socialism, as such, as a form of atheism. The photography is crisp and clear.

The men are depicted as undifferentiated as if they were part of the landscape and the mining village part of the natural order of things. As ever, Ford presents women as the heart of the household and men the head. He does this without the usual gynophobic nonsense of placing females on a pedestal, instead as the eye of the hurricane of human life.

The theme here is one of community and the narrower community of family and friends - and enemies. The characters are far less important here than the political ideas they archetypically represent. Funny and heartbreaking in equal measure.


Henry Fool
(1998)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

A film essentially about the despair of the creative in a world that fears it for the slap in the face of their own fear of self that it is. It is essentially about creativity - the urge and the act.

This is funny in a low-key sort of way but is also too long and rather more slow-moving than strictly necessary - but fans of Hal HARTLEY should be used to that by now.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Green Man
(1956)

RATING:60%
FORMAT:DVD

Amusing black comedy about a professional hitman, played by the ever-excellent and hangdog Alastair SIM. Not one of his greatest achievements but still good, clean fun. He is ably supported by the oleaginous Terry THOMAS and the impulsive George COLE. The understated sexiness of Jill ADAMS is also well in evidence, for which we have much to be truly grateful.

A problem with this movie is that it betrays its stage origins and makes not enough use of the cinema's full potential. Its real problem however is that unlike an Ealing comedy it simply lacks the courage of its own convictions. It leavens the dark humor with broad sex farce that does not really fit. The two genres are not natural bedfellows and tend to distract one form the other. The farce is also there to take our attentions away from the plot's more incredible elements. However, the ending is first-rate and straight out of Fawlty Towers.


Sunday, 25 November 2012

Soldier Blue
(1970)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD



the only good white man is a dead one

Interesting look at endemic White violence and its use to sublimate human sexuality in providing an alternative outlet for the expression of feelings. The genocidal nature of the Indian Wars is laid bare as Whites express their belief in lebensraum.

The savages here are the Whites who have provoked many of the various Indian tribes in responsive atrocities of entire families. Civilization is here defined as the ability to control one’s emotions and, then, to find someone to hate in recompense for a life thus half-lived. This is an explicit critique of Freudian mumbo-jumbo regarding the necessity for self-control in White culture for civilization to take place.

The implication, then, of White male gynophobia and misogyny is that women induce men to forget self-control and are, thus, not civilized themselves and, so, not to be treated as such. The fear of women inherent in White culture is made clear here reflected in the sexual mutilations that take place as a form of twisted sexual self-expression.

What makes the movie more watchable than one would expect is the romantic-comedy aspect to the whole proceedings - despite the weak characterization - along with the education of Whites about the real (ie, White Supremacist) nature of their own culture. The Vietnam allegory (especially My Lai) is palpable and well-taken - as it was in Little Big Man. Projecting-and-displacing ones evil onto others is the classic self-fulfilling prophecy that attempts to both justify while also explaining the historic White criminality on show here and the hypocrisy of any White claim to civilization and superiority.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Friday, 23 November 2012

Toki wo kakeru shojo
[Girl Who Leapt Through Time]
(2006)

RATING:60%
FORMAT:DVD

Despite the cleverness and technical sophistication on show, this is not much of a movie. The story is rather slight and the characterization fuzzy. It simply states that teenagers cannot wait to grow up yet yearn for the apparent certainties of childhood. This is not enough to sustain a feature-length movie and yet the visuals certainly are impressive. Moreover, the mood of the entire animation is surprisingly mature despite the one-note thematic content.

This is a time-travel movie trying to be as emotionally sophisticated as La Jetée or Twelve Monkeys but not being able to overcome its need to appeal to a less-than-sophisticated audience. Although it gets the mysterious magical powers that young women seem to have from men's point-of-view, it does not exploit them as fully as it might. The desire to go back and right an error made is a common one but here it is trivialised to allowing a boy one shunned to express his love.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Thursday, 22 November 2012

Frozen River
(2008)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD



A clever little film about borders between people and peoples, the effects of white racism and what the desperate will do for money. Coming on like an intelligent version of The Transporter, this deals with real issues of humanitarianism and ethics.

The Whites here - although as desperate as the illegal migrants here - find great difficulty in empathising with others; hence, their essential inhumanity. What marks this out as special is the moral complexity of criminal behaviour hopefully ameliorated by disliking those trafficked and that it is also woman-centred in its preoccupation with the domestic and the familial. The kind of film that Thelma & Louise could never have been - no matter how hard it tried.

The central visual metaphor of a frozen river over which the action takes place is quite brilliant in that it clearly represents the thin ice upon which many of the these people skate in their everyday lives and the economic precariousness of those lives.

Packed with politics and emotions enough for the most jaded: this focuses ultimately on feminine solidarity and female sacrifice. Also the quiet, unassuming toughness of women who will do what they have to do ensure their families survive. The element of wishful-thinking is impossible to overlook given the very existence of Indian reservations in the United States and Canada and their racist meaning, but this is impressive work nonetheless.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Four Feathers
(1939)

RATING:100%
FORMAT:DVD



Hordes of Savage, War-Crazed Fuzzy Wuzzies

Curiously schizophrenic movie that is both xenophobic and phenotypal while also criticizing the very notion of the British Empire that resulted from both. The critique is valid because it is based on the notion that charity begins at home and that those who go overseas seeking glory are running away from problems at home. The dervishes are resented as cruel and ruthless; the imperialists as noble and good.

The notion of tradition at any cost - no matter how senseless - is well presented as a substitute for true happiness; that is, consistency and being true to oneself.

That said, this is also a stirring action/adventure that is well-directed, acted and photographed despite the absurd stiff upper-lips that ended-up causing the loss of the British Empire.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Foreign Correspondent
(1940)

RATING:40%
FORMAT:DVD

Despite director Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant visual technique, he cannot make this much more than patriotic propaganda designed to persuade the United States to join forces with the British Empire against Nazi Germany. The love story gets short shrift in favor of the plotting, and the sexual chemistry is not present in any case. The usual sexual humor is also therefore weak and we really do not care for the couple because they are little more than stereotypes. This makes the silly plot all the more distracting - as it was not in the similarly-themed but far superior Casablanca.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Ae Fond Kiss…
(2004)

RATING:100%
FORMAT:DVD



Excellent study of religious fundamentalism's effects on a young couple who decide to cross ethnic-boundaries. Additionally, a cogent critique of the War on Terror's inherent White bias that can only lead to the torture chamber. With no sign of guilt-ridden White sentimentality about Muslim characters since each speaks his own point-of-view, not just the White writer's. In this regard, Paul LAVERTY is to be congratulated for showing Muslims as they really are and not as they are often seen.

Kenneth LOACH presents the poor as people and not as stereotypes. Blacks are also presented positively which, for a Wwhite filmmaker, is unusual. This, indeed, is his main contribution to cinema: Visual naturalism coupled with psychological realism. Most filmed drama is psychologically unrealistic, because it is stereotypal rather than archetypal. Attempts are most often made to culturally pigeonhole fictional characters so as to give vent to the absurd political positions of the writers; while little is done to elucidate human nature, as such. In Loach's work, the tail never wags the dog: Characters conform to archetypes and not any of the neurotic needs of sad people.

White culture's generalised White supremacism is depicted, as well as the inevitablly-negative Muslim response to such an ethnic closed-door policy, for their safety's sake, when it comes to so-called social integration. Catholics are shown as medievalist bigots; Muslims as feeding-off their resentment at everyday prejudice - both serve to part-maim their offspring with an over-sensitivity to the opinions of others. This suggests religion has been the single greatest cause of intolerance in history; and yet many of the children shown here still choose to grow into more fully-rounded human beings.

Eva BIRTHISTLE gives the best performance here as the White girl (goree) thrust by her love for a Muslim boy into the emotional maelstrom of Romeo-and-Juliet-style sexual and racial politics.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

Jing wu ying xiong
[Fist of Legend]
(1994)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Fighting Fists Tell a Story

Like pornographic movies and kung-fu films, movies can be excuses for set pieces that do not integrate with the surrounding drama. The numerous fights in evidence here, however, come directly from the story in a natural way and actually help propel it forward so that the proverbial tail does not wag the dog.

This is a story of honor, justice & racewar - Sino-Japanese - as well as the spiritual philosophy behind Eastern martial-arts.


Copyright © 2012 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.

First Blood
[RAMBO: First Blood]
(1982)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

White Frankensteins

Clever modern-day Western with a healthy dose of Frankenstein serving as an indictment of the deleterious psychiatric-effects of an un-winnable war on the survivors of the losing side.

Sylvester STALLONE is perfect in a largely wordless performance as the psychiatrically-disordered Vietnam War veteran whose difficulty with coming-to-terms with his tortuous experiences at the hands of Viet Minh provides this melodrama with its reason to be. All the performers are excellent, in fact, helped by a sagacious screenplay.

It is all a little contrived but very emotionally-affective for all that, as all the best Greek tragedy is because it synthesizes the issues into simple terms without ever resorting to emotionalistic oversimplifications.

The film focuses on the various degrees of failed manliness within a posse comitatus - and the inevitable conflict within this group - along with the near-impossibility of the hero readjusting to civilian life. Our loyalties are confused here in an interesting and ironic way because we support the police for dis-incentivising vagrancy while acknowledging that the vagrant here is the very product of the culture the police are sworn to protect. The real tragedy is that this tragedy needed to be told in the first place.


Firm
(1993)

RATING:60%
FORMAT:DVD

Sort-of clever thriller that lacks somewhat in credibility but features excellent performances and, strangely, a perfect Dave Grusin score. His music is both spontaneous and manages to fit all the film's moods without seeming in any way intrusive or wrong. This is rare in a Hollywood film.

The real problem with this motion picture is that it is not really about anything. The implied themes of loyalty to one's career and the firm for which one works and marital fidelity are neither fully developed nor explored. There is very little for the audience to get emotionally-involved in, while the plot slowly reveals itself, until we reach a rather weak ending. The characters are poorly written and, despite the best efforts of the actors, fail to ignite as people we really want to spend much time with.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Monday, 19 November 2012

Field of Dreams
(1989)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Despite the expository dialogue and emotional schmaltz, this is an emotionally-involving look at the relationship between White American fathers and sons. Baseball is used as a lingua franca between the two generations and, ultimately, bridges the generation gap between them. If only it were that simple, movies like this would quickly become redundant.

The sense of awe at the forces of human nature and what reality makes us do - to make us whole people after a personal disruption - are palpable. The plot meanders yet inexorably leads to the right and inevitable conclusion: That dreams are telling us something important and we ignore them at our peril.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Few Good Men
(1992)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD



Good movie about the military mind with humorous undertones. Bullying in the services is vainly justified as a means of toughening recruits yet when they die a cover-up ensues denying the existence of institutional bullying said to be essential to unit cohesion. The toughening-up of recruits is justified because of the alleged threat from overseas enemies which is exaggerated.

The cloying male-bonding (crypto-gay) Americanisms are kept to a minimum while the chemistry between the two leads fails to ignite.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Fanny och Alexander
(1982)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

[Fanny & Alexander]

A somewhat jarringly-elliptical narrative partly conceals a profound - albeit theatrical - meditation on functional families. Despite the title, this film really focuses on the experiences and imagination of Alexander as his father dies to be replaced by a strict authoritarian. In this way, we see the difference between families that function and those that do not.

Ghosts and what they represent - our deepest memories - haunt this drama as the dead affect the living, and the living affect the next generation with memories of them when they, in their turn, are gone. The acting is superb and the cinematography lush or ice-cold as emotionally necessary. The critique of Christian fundamentalism is particularly pointed in that religious literalists always loudly proclaim their worship of god when they are really doing nothing more than worship themselves.

The characters here present people as they really are - warts and all - a bit like the Addams Family but immensely likable for all that. An almost entirely-enveloping fictional world that you do not wish to leave - like a warm bed on a cold day.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Education
(2009)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD



Clever look at the psychological stultification, White supremacy, cultural snobbery and emotional mediocrity inherent in White middle-class English life and the resultant desire of the affluent young to violate a norm of that culture: 'Never take sweets from strangers'. Like Passe Ton Bac d'Abord the difficulty here is trying to keep awake when having nothing to keep awake for. And in keeping one's virginity long after its sell-by date.

But the central character here has nothing to replace the emptiness of her life except a pretentious doting on high culture that so often like (as a character says about listening to classical music) attending one's own funeral. Albeit that she is engagingly superficial, by the film's end she merely swaps one form of materialism for another. This subverts the movie's ostensible claim to be about innocence corrupted when the culture she is born into is also a corrupting influence; an Oxford education being for those who cannot think for themselves.

The film is delightfully witty and all the performers are excellent. Peter SARSGAARD is perfectly charming as the perfect charmer and Carey mulligan is a natural as the thirster after knowledge who wishes to drink deep of the waters of the university of life. The ultimate question here is: What is the point of a good education. The movie has no real answer because the well-educated do not make the world a better place any more than the not-so-well-educated. A something-for-nothing culture is inevitably going to lead to the emotional heartache shown here and the desire of corrupted adults to live through their immature charges by infantilising them.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Eureka
(1983)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Envy & Greed of Lesser Men

A death-haunted film that does not fully understand nor appreciate its own thematic concerns. The fulfilled fantasy of a man who wanted to become rich from striking lucky with gold prospecting but who dies in the frozen wastes and is eaten by wolves. Better to spend 15 years searching for what you want than to find it; for in the finding there is much less joy than in the seeking for what else is left.

The real men here are those who know what they want and go after it - the rest are immature gold-diggers whose only means of expression is either psychological or physical violence. A kind of Citizen Kane homage focusing on the envy and greed of lesser men whose ambitions outshine their abilities; hence, the compensatory violence.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Dumbo
(1941)

RATING:100%
FORMAT:DVD

A cartoon feature done caricature style rather than the usual more realistic animation from Disney - and none the worse for that.

A classic story of a deformed child and a protective mother ridiculed by other parents for that deformity. In reality, however, the deformity here is merely a different ability; aping (before its time) the politically-correct view that the handicapped are merely differently-abled. In this, the movie is a funny and engaging ode to idealized motherhood, as such, and to that particular kind that protects in order to help grow.

As in the best musicals, the songs move the plot forward and are not mere adornment - as well as being distinctly memorable and tuneful. Moreover, the characters are well drawn, particularly the friendly mouse who encourages Dumbo to fly.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Drag Me to Hell
(2009)

RATING:40%
FORMAT:DVD

…a tale / Told by an idiot…

Unimaginative horror movie wherein the clichés fly thick and fast - unrelieved by any credible sense-of-humor, irony or good acting. Why oh why do the homes of the possessed never have properly-oiled door-hinges?!

The social snobbery of White Western culture is well-presented, as is the inevitable office politics of mediocrities having to curry favor with their bosses in order to compensate for their lack of outstanding talent. But these are unintegrated into the ostensible drama; leaving the audience without the necessary character empathy to engage its emotions fully and profitably.

But more than this, the plot makes no sense since it is based on a nonsensical premise. Why would anyone imbued with spectacular supernatural powers have difficulty paying-off their mortgage, such that they would return from the grave to seek revenge from a foreclosing bank official?


Copyright © 2012 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.

Donnie Brasco
(1997)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Undercover Blues

Gripping thriller that nevertheless fails to answer its own premiss; viz, how can an undercover FBI Special Agent keep his sanity for six years all the while fearing he is going to be killed by those Mafiosi whose actions he is recording.

As with all change, one must act as though the worst has already happened so that one is not distracted from one's goal by the fear of failure. But, this is not dramatized effectively here and we are left to wonder how anyone can live with the daily threat of death for six years. The audience is left to fill this important blank left by assuming the answer is the same for women living sexist cultures or Blacks living White supremacist ones or the lower-class in snobbish cultures.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Sunday, 18 November 2012

Dirty Harry
(1971)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Vigilante Violence

Despite rather odd and all-too-obvious plot-holes, this is a thoughtful and entertaining movie about the citizen’s obligations to the state and the state’s responsibility to the citizen. This relationship is viewed here as having broken down such that a homicidal maniac is allowed to roam the streets killing as he pleases because he is being afforded due legal process despite the fact that he has obvious felonious intent.

The film leaves the viewer to decide the proper balance between the rights of the perpetrator and the rights of the accused and, in so doing, steals its ending from High Noon as Clint EASTWOOD shows the physical presence that made him a star. Rough justice is still justice despite the legal profession’s insistence that the police focus on obeying the law more than in apprehending offenders. Fortunately, few criminals are as cunning and as psychopathic as Scorpio here, but the point is well made.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Devil in a Blue Dress
(1995)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Film Noir

Clever film noir with excellent performances that is a paean to Blackness and a critique of Whiteness: Here exposed as preferring misery to happiness if it means going against the unwritten rules of a White supremacist culture.

The only problem is the casting choices that make an important plot point obvious when we actually see the actress cast as the eponymous heroine. This makes us think about the political point being made but removes half of the mystery.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Deliverance
(1972)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD



Nature to be commanded must be obeyed

A very well made film that goes to show that those bred to the city are better off staying there rather than going backwooding and ending up in a mess of trouble.

Man’s nature is seen as the enemy here not the more spontaneous flora and fauna we humans refer to as dumb. Interestingly even the rural folks are unable to live fully at peace with the natural; world around them and one comes to see the impossibility of escape into some rural idyll of one’s fantasising.


Copyright © 2012 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.

Death Race 2000
(1977)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Wacky Race

Crazy patchwork quilt of a movie that is a delightful combination of the Wacky Races, Rollerball and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This morbid black comedy is consistent and it is difficult not to laugh at the most distasteful of jokes. That this should be a send-up of the very bread and circuses' attitude to which the film panders is problematic, but the humor of a White culture that has legalized murder always wins through. (Inevitably the murderous obsessions lead to the foundation of suicide cults.)

Politically, the film makes the interesting point that panem et circem is necessary in an economic downturn to take the minds of the masses away from their suffering, decades of austerity and loss of the joy in conspicuous consumption. Along with the fact that this is an apartheid Whites' Only movie because they have decided to exercise their global position and call it 'minority privilege'.

This is a clever satire on the inherent excesses of White supremacy enlivened by an Evel Knievel-like turn as an automobile-obsessed racing driver.


Dam Busters
(1955)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

About a raid that the Germans recovered from in a matter of weeks and that was never repeated and that was only partially successful. And that wasted the efforts of clever, committed men.

This is the kind of filmmaking that valorises desperation as a form of heroism rather than what it is - an unwillingness to know when one is defeated and of how to move on. A weapon that must be dropped from a certain height at a certain speed at a certain distance from the target proves such desperation and the uselessness of such a weapon for any other purpose. Using such unusual weapons is simply a distraction from the main war effort and the proper use of resources.

Richard TODD is his usual wooden self while Michael REDGRAVE is simply magnificent and makes the film worth watching as he plays the dedicated boffin out to prove those committee-minded fools at the ministry that he really is the genius he knows himself to be. What should have been a study in contrasts (man-of-action versus a man of the intellect) fails for this reason.

Oddly, there is no explanation as to how a bomb dropped from a plane could bounce at any point in a film that prides itself on scientific nous. Despite the lack of in-depth characterisation and dramatic conflict between the characters, this is still solid and dependable entertainment of the kind the British cinema used to do so well but no longer does.


Saturday, 17 November 2012

Coraline
(2009)

RATING:100%
FORMAT:DVD

Handcrafted plastic animation, as it should be - sans soulless CGI. This movie exemplifies the basic difference between an automobile made by hand and one straight off the production line.

Stylized to stress character, this also successfully diverts attention from the issue of movement being not entirely human so that the audience does not get bogged-down in naturalism issues since the characters have to express their selves through motion somehow.

The vocal performances are excellent although Dakota FANNING is limited to using her voice to get the character of Coraline across to the audience when she is rather more of a visual actress.

Brilliant sfx and music notwithstanding, this cautionary tale of wishing for something more than you have because you do not fully realise the value of what you have is less than impressive as a piece of storytelling.

It takes far too long to get the story started as it spends the first half of its running time trying very hard to impress us with how clever the animators and the voice artists are.

In the end, this is a warmed-over story done many times before and mostly better. A pity since the talent here is of a high order but they forgot to come up with either an original story or an original treatment.


Copyright © 2012 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.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.