Fallen

(2004)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.geocities.co.jp)

An even-handed, subtle and low key movie that manages to convey the boredom, the conflicts of duty and the sheer life affirming terror of combat – from the points of view of American, German and Italian troops in Italy in 1944.

The mundanities of soldiering are well presented, as are the necessary sacrifices; particularly poignant in the case of the Axis forces since, for them, they were so much in vain. The movie does not spare us the pain of seeing our favorite characters killed as we are never watching a typical Hollywood film where we are pretty certain – because of the star pecking order - which will survive by the end. This fits in well with the basic theme of the fallen being more important than those that survive.

A film that suggests the true horror of war lies in the sheer banality of the whole enterprise.

Copyright © 2013 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.

This is England (2006)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.cinedelica.com)

An exceptional work; proving White people can understand the complex issues surrounding White supremacy with subtlety.

Post-imperial England is shown as ethnically self-loathing as a minority of Whites easily leads the majority towards an ethnic blame culture. The real sadness is that the Saint George’s Cross could become emblematic of racism.

(www.cinedelica.com)

The performances are all excellent, particularly the precocious Thomas TURGOOSE and the superb Stephen GRAHAM - who gets under the skin of the racist mentality, brilliantly. You feel oddly sorry for the fact his father never loved him and that his idea of love is drunken fornication. He is constantly on the edge of another violent outburst because no one really likes him as he increasingly traps himself within his self-isolating delusions. Self-hatred positively oozes from the screen: A loser never seemed more lost.

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Copyright © 2013 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.

I’m All Right Jack (1959)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.paperblog.fr)

Not in the least dated exposé of UK industrial relations and their inevitable filtering through the British national obsession with social-class origins and their consequent (false) loyalties.

The playing of all concerned is faultless. From the smallest parts to the largest – making this that rare thing, a truly ensemble movie with no one overweening ego getting in the way of the themes explored. Peter SELLERS is particularly memorable.

(www.paperblog.fr)

The generalized parasitism of the middle class in their dependency on the lower classes to do the work they will not do - leading to a desire to keep the poor permanently separated from access to capital - is well sketched. Along with the chip on the shoulder mentality of the lower class in their desire to similarly obtain something for nothing – or, at least, for as little effort as possible.

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Copyright © 2013 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.

Take (2008)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.allmovie.com/)

Despite the directorially-technical cleverness, this is not as clever a movie as it thinks it is.

The acting is melodramatic and serves up some of the necessary emotional pyrotechnics in detailing the travails of an ordinary man placed in a difficult situation by a robbery that nearly leaves him dead. Yet this is still a rather meagre look at the psychological mechanics of revenge, that merely pits what one could lose from taking the revenge against the pleasure of the revenge, itself.

Not profound enough to genuinely engage our empathy despite the ciné-vérité family shown. The characters are flat and underwritten – especially the chief villain who is nothing more than a cynical, death-dealing cipher.

This film cannot decide whether it is a potboiler or something more serious and so suffers from aesthetic schizophrenia.

Copyright © 2013 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.

When We Were Kings (1996)

Similar to: Soul Power ()

RATING: 80%

(Image: http://www.thatfilmguy.net)

Insightful documentary about the Black experience in America as regards the unwillingness of Blacks to play the White man's game.

Muhammad ALI was a political athlete who refused to serve in the US military in Vietnam because the Vietcong never called him a 'Nigger'. Also, of course, Blacks are largely denied a share of the American Dream - despite paying taxes - so have less reason to be patriotic. This stance made ALI a hero for Blacks and somewhat less popular with Whites.

The irony of this movie is that it focused positive attention on Africa - and the achievements of Blacks - in a way that the White media rarely shows, yet Zaire was a dictatorship that does not make Africa look good - especially in terms of human rights. This issue is largely unexplored here.

This film is also about the positive mental attitude necessary to overcome apparently insuperable odds. ALI was a beautiful fighter because he was intelligent and used that brain to beat a boxer (George FOREMAN) who should have beaten him - at least on paper. Yet loving boxing as much as ALI did is tempting the fates to destroy him if he stays in the ring beyond his sell-by date.

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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.

Fararishtay Kifti Rost (2002)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://trash-can-dance.blogspot.co.uk/)

[Angel on the Right]

Strange mixture of depressive naturalism and magical realism that leaves one with no sense of the real meaning and intent of what just been watched.

Essentially, a man released from prison is cleverly punished by those he owes money to. He eventually becomes the leopard that changes his spots as he slowly learns to take responsibility for his life. Yet he still finds it difficult to express his feelings for a young girl who likes the bit of rough that he is nor for the son he never knew he had.

(http://trash-can-dance.blogspot.co.uk)

The humor comes from the local village mayor having a telephone hotline to Allah. This enables him both to compute when one of his constituents is going to die, but also to swap this date with anyone who wishes to die earlier with someone who wishes to die later!

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Copyright © 2013 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.

Keane (2004)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.matttrailer.com)

Relentlessly first person narrative that can easily confuse viewers since everything we know is told to us by someone who's clearly having some kind of mental breakdown. This tests audience empathy and compassion for his plight to the very limits of endurance, yet works well here as a storytelling technique.

A father claims his daughter's been abducted but this is merely an alcoholic/drug addict fantasy in this incisive and rather disquieting look at a man refusing to face his problems honestly – until the timely arrival of a cute seven year old. She's too young and guileless to know the good affect she's having but, nevertheless, has it all the same.

Superbly acted to the nth degree, this is a showcase for the finest acting and directing talent in a film dedicated to the solid psychological principle: "Get Over It!"

Copyright © 2013 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.

Lilja 4-Ever

(2002)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.its.caltech.edu)

[Lilya 4-Ever]

A movie about the sex trafficking of young girls from the former Soviet Union to the West on the basis of dreams of a better life. A bleak, dispiriting and somewhat depressing vision that sparkles with emotional realism despite the tragic inevitability of the film’s ending.

That a culture could be so sexually obsessed that there is actually a shortage of prostitutes in the West, that they have to be imported from the East, says a great deal about Whites they do not wish to hear: About their unhealthy attitudes toward their own bodies, their feelings – and each other.

The acting is quietly understated and there seems no way out of this cycle of exploitation since few want to face the fact that such people trafficking involves large sums of money. While perfectly ordinary - and apparently respectable - Westerners want to have sex, for money, with teenagers.

Copyright © 2013 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.

Gone Baby Gone

(2007)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://movieretrospect.blogspot.co.uk)

Despite the somewhat unbelievable plotting, this is a thoughtful movie about the way in which Western culture treats its young. The issue is the rights of poor natural parents as opposed to those without kinship who would clearly make better child rearers.

Our emotions are played with in being presented with a junkie mum (the lowest of the low) whose child is kidnapped. We feel horror at the thought of pedophiles molesting the four year old, yet feel equal disgust for her mother since she has no concern for her daughter. Children here are used as pawns in adult get even games involving drug dealers and child molesters who use extreme violence to avoid detection.

The characters never rise much above the level of mouthpieces for particular moral viewpoints, despite the excellent acting - yet the theme never fails to grip.

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Copyright © 2013 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.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

(2008)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.shelfheroes.com)

A better title would be “White Men Behaving Badly”. This is ridiculous rather than funny; the characters too old not to know better that faking intimacy gets you nowhere.

Need not love; sex not passion is presented but the work is not self-reflexive enough to understand its own theme. It is like listening to a mental patient still in therapy who refuses to move on. This is not a tale told from the tranquillity of the future and so lacks both hindsight and insight. It is as neurotic as the characters themselves and as dull as other people‘s problems always are.

We are invited to laugh at the characters – not with them – so where is the necessary comic empathy? This is gynophobic nonsense from men who do not like women very much because they cannot control them. Their orificial nature quickly becomes tiresome: A time passer not a time filler.

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Copyright © 2013 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.

Avventura [The Adventure] (1960)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	Cinema

(http://internationalcinemareview.blogspot.co.uk)

A lovelorn girl disappears from a remote island and the emptiness of her friends’ lives is revealed in their response. We are not sure if it is murder, suicide or a voluntary disappearance – although the boyfriend is very keen on solacing himself with her best friend within hours of her disappearance. Characters exist in a soulless limbo – unable to express respect since nothing they posses was actually earned – merely inherited.

None of the couples is happy and lack the smarts to discover a solution, as their life of ease has led to self regarding solipsism. The characters are hard to like but their decadence and lack of identity is supremely realistic. The view of Western marriage is especially bleak: Like the glittering mediocrities in La Dolce Vita, they only have each other – and that is not much.

A compelling study of contemporary, Western cultural alienation.

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Copyright © 2013 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.

Appartement

(1996)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://most-underrated-movies.blogspot.co.uk)

[Apartment]

Bizarrely-engrossing, Hitchcock-influenced sort of thriller about romantic obsession and its consequences for those willingly trapped within its limitations. You find yourself compelled to watch even though it is hard to know what is going on in the first half. The film wilfully manoeuvres itself from first- to third-person – quite skilfully – and just when you thought you have got it, throws a googly at you.

A movie about sexual stereotyping, sexual obsession and a critique of the inability of many men to see women as individuals - and of not letting go of the past when sexual relationships end. Nevertheless the female characters come across very well here and are ultimately partners in romantic crime.

(http://www.cinemagia.ro)

Fascinating, but confusing, tale of a man who cannot stop chasing women and settle down with one.

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Copyright © 2013 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.

WALK HARD: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.time.com)

Like all knowing-satire, this is more knowing than satirical: A parody not of real life but of its Hollywood representations.

The parody of American musical biopics is wafer-thin and lacks crucial insights into human relationships. Instead, the humour relies not on our experience of life but of Hollywood movies – and comedy about nothing but itself can never really be all that funny.

The repetitive and explicitly-orificial nature of the humour – with its single entendres – soon palls because (like promiscuous sex) it does not compensate for the real thing.

Themes, plotting, characterisation and style are all relentlessly bland as if this was suggestive of the still waters running deep that it is not.

Having said all that, much of this is pretty funny so long as you do not wish to be challenged or shocked.

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Copyright © 2013 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.

KUNG POW! Enter the Fist (2001)

RATING:	40%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://shadoka.wordpress.com/)

Falls into the White supremacist trap of parodying what it does not fully understand.

Copyright © 2013 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.

Rock of Ages (2012)

RATING:	40%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://rockofagesmovie.warnerbros.com/)

Whites cannot Play Black Music

Bland leads; bland songs; bland singers; bland movie.

Whites turning a Black musical form (Rock & Roll) - that Blacks abandoned decades ago - into sanitized erotica for a passionless White culture without any vibrant popular music of its own: A narcissistic form of masturbation.

The inherent conflict, within Whites, over self-expression (which they have politicized) leads to the emotional repression referenced here. Rather than get-on with the all-important human business of self-expression, Whites waste time worrying about what others think. But this is never meaningfully explored, here, so what is the point of this movie? Is it nothing more than a desperate attempt to resurrect the filmed Hollywood musical? But if the music is about nothing, then who will care about watching such movies?

Copyright © 2013 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.

Truman Show

(1998)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	Cinema

(Image: http://kaist455.wordpress.com/)

An analysis of a protective childhood that is really designed to benefit the parents. It is also about escaping the prison of one’s beliefs in exchange for personal growth – either that, or accept the mental illness that comes from lack of true knowledge. Even well meaning parents emotionally retard kids they seek to shelter since such parents need to be believed in rather than to believe. Infantilizing their offspring also means the parents do not have to grow up, either.

The glaring plot holes are mostly overcome by this clever melodramatic indictment of the West’s cultural emptiness that seeks fake emotions via the pornography of reality tv – and our cowardly desire to live in a gilded cage.

To beat all this requires renouncing belief itself – then the whole exploitational edifice collapses under the weight of its own hubris.

Copyright © 2008 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.

Thirteen Days (2000)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.heyuguys.com)

Although you know the ending, this is still scary stuff: A game without rules is being played where any mistake could lead to Armageddon. Tense, suspenseful and containing material recently declassified, this offers a fuller picture of how the world came to within 24 hours of all out thermonuclear war.

The battle between the Hawks and the Doves in the Kennedy administration is the central dramatic driver here since the military clearly desire revenge for the Bay of Pigs. This internecine warfare suggests a good reason for Kennedy’s assassination/regime change/coup d’état – and Nikita Khrushchev’s being deposed soon after by Soviet hard-liners.

Clearly, politics is too important to be left to the generals. The situation presented is so unprecedented that the politicians’ habit of making it up as they go along trumps the military’s knee-jerk response of bomb-first-talk-last that could have got us all killed.

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Copyright © 2013 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Pierrot le Fou

(1965)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	Cinema

(http://thethoughtexperiment.files.wordpress.com)

[Pierrot Goes Wild; Crazy Pete]

Godard’s usual love of US culture and hatred of US politics is the self-involved focus here. The director constantly reminds us we are watching a movie via Brechtian distancing devices in this meta-film about a pair of Bonnie & Clyde types criticising Western materialism and imperialism.

Additionally, a self indulgent analysis of a failed sexual-relationship; lacking proper insight as to why the characters relentlessly rationalize their feelings (ie, talk to camera) rather than come to terms with them. The lack of context here is negative in dramatic terms since the grammar of film becomes the grammar of this film in it being also very much an essay on cinema itself.

Little more than the sum of its fun parts, yet Jean Paul BELMONDO (like Humphrey Bogart) is one of the few rebel actors who looks good with a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

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Copyright © 2013 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.