Chimpomatic

Unforgiven

(dir. Clint Eastwood)

Malpaso

THEN: Seen as something of a resurgence for the serious western, Unforgiven tells the tale of two retired gunslingers (Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman), who are approached by a short-sighted young hopeful, after a local whorehouse puts up a bounty for two brutal cowboys. Meanwhile, hard-nosed sheriff Gene Hackman rules the town with an iron first - and runs any bounty hunters out of town.

David Webb Peoples' excellent script re-wrote the heroism, bravery and gentlemanly behaviors of the old west into a bloody, misfiring, mauling - and cast Eastwood perfectly as a bastion of days gone by. The film was something of a return to form for Eastwood, as both and actor and a director - and the Academy duly noted him for both. He moved up a notch in directing terms after this and hasn't really looked back.

NOW: Still unbelievably powerful, if anything, Unforgiven has improved with age, sitting comfortably with the films that it was made in honour of, at the western's throne. Eastwood handles the action and the direction like a master carpenter - showing a magnificent storytelling skill inherited from the likes of Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. There's no flashy camera work, just a restrained observation that never interferes with the story and serves it perfectly.

Eastwood's central performance as William Munny is so reserved and withdrawn, it's surprising you can feel anything for him at all. Few actors can remain silent in a scene while everyone talks around them - and still steal the show, but Eastwood does it, drawing heavily on much of his prior screen history to silently fill out Munny's back story. Morgan Freeman comes a close second of course and the pair of them have a great chemistry, which would be repeated masterfully in Million Dollar Baby. Brutal, engaging, vengeful and brilliant.

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5th Dec 2008 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

(dir. Alex Gibney)

HDNet Films

"Of all the correspondents, he was the least factual, but the most accurate." Frank Mankiewicz, George McGovern's 1972 campaign manager,

Great doc on the original wildman behind a typewriter, Hunter S Thompson. Packed with footage from the many highlights of his psychedelic journey through the American Dream: hanging with the Hell's Angels, fending off lizards in Vegas hotel bars, heading out on the campaign trail with George McGovern, talking football with Nixon, running for sheriff, hunting boar with machine guns and ingesting a seemingly non-stop diet of bourbon and drugs.

All his co-pilots are here - along with some of the people he took shots at along the way - the mighty Ralph Steadman whose scratchy drawings brought the Gonzo ethos to life, Rolling Stone head honcho Jann Wenner, Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Buffet, both Mrs Thompsons, Johnny Depp (who played him in the Terry Gilliam film), Pat Buchanan, Jimmy Carter and George McGovern.

It's a film that plays it pretty straight - but that's probably wise when your subject is so out-there. Engaging, moving, inspiring and funny, it's a very enjoyable tribute to a man who planned his own funeral years before shooting himself.

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3rd Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Quantum Of Solace

(dir. Marc Foster)

MGM

Daniel Craig puts in another granite-hard turn as the noughties 007 in this Casino Royale sequel.

As in his first mission, he's a good combination of all the best Bonds - the punch-first toughness of Connery, the occasional quip from Moore and the physical presence of Brosnan. The scenes with Judi Dench's M bristle, new Bond girl Olga Kurylenko does a good job of breaking through Bond's post-Vesper grief and French actor Mathieu Amalric makes a decent mwah-ha-ha villain for Bond to chase around the world.

But - and it's a big but - it's a film that's totally let down by the action direction. From the opening sequence, to the fights, speedboats chases etc it's a mess - you can't see what's happening, and so it's impossible to be impressed or to care, or even get that excited. There's nothing to match the visceral thrill of CR's parkour chase here - although you get the feeling that any of the action scenes could have measured up if they'd just let one camera linger on what was happening for longer than a second. There's one fight which pretty much cuts to another angle after every punch - a bewildering, disorientating tactic, which leaves you with the impression of some hard-ass kicking going on, but no real sense of the flow of anything. 

The so-so theme from Jack White and Alicia Keys just about sums it all up really: it's close, but really misses the essence of what made Craig's first go such a treat. Would like to see him have another go, because this would be a lame way to leave it.

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9th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Arctic Monkeys

At The Apollo

Domino / Warp Films

With a couple of hit albums under their belts and the band already distracted by side projects, the obligatory live video seems to be one way of maintaining the Arctic Monkeys status - documenting their monster Worst Nightmare tour, which culminated with this show at the Manchester Apollo in December 2007.

Left-field production company Warp Film may be behind the production, but filming wise it's a pretty straightforward affair, with a couple of camera on tracks, a few roaming grainy numbers and pretty much just the stage lighting. A decent effort has gone into the post-production, with a Burt Bacharach/Thomas Crown style intro and outro, and the occasional burst of split screen.

It's a fairly faultless performance from the Monkeys, featuring a pretty conventional set-list waith all the highlights in all the expected places (Teddy Picker, When The Sun Goes Down, 505). There's little banter from the band, pretty much whittling the whole production down to little more than a slightly cooler that normal edition of a T4 concert special. For fans of the band this may be essential viewing, but for any body else it servers as little more than a decent document of what this band were up to, at this particular point in time.

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5th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Waltz With Bashir

Ari Folman

Bridgit Folman Film Gang

Powerful examination of guilt, war and repression from Israeli director Ari Folman. Shot in the rotoscoped animation style that both Richard Linklater (Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly) and Ralph Bakshi (American Pop, Lord Of The Rings) have used, it's a docudrama take on his time in the Israeli army, as he searches through his past to try and uncover lost memories of a mission in the Lebanon. 

As he travels the world to meet up with old friends and people he was in the army with, we circle round ideas of how people deal with the horrors of war, the guilt of living and the terror of being witness to unspeakable horror. The choice to animate the story allows it to float effortlessly across time and space, weaving together his memories as other people open up the moments his mind has blocked for over twenty years. 

It's the collision between the warmth of seeing old friends and the brutality of their time in the Lebanon war that makes this film such an intense experience. It's been criticised for soft-pedalling the Israeli position, but it seemed to be much more concerned with trying to understand how our minds work to comprehend the shock of war rather than the morality; how people can carry on living after seeing how terrible people can be firsthand. 

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3rd Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

(dir. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg)

New Line Cinema

More dumb stoner fun from Harold and Kumar. This time they're trying to bust out of Guantanamo after getting arrested mid-flight to Amsterdam when Harold's smokeless bong is mistaken for a bomb.

If you've seen the first one, you'll know what to expect: mid-to-low brow stoner jokes with enough room and wit for some sly social commentary. That it's a stoner film prepared to actually acknowledge the madness of Guantanamo Bay is all to its credit; obviously it's hardly the most in depth critique, but like their take on racism in the first one, it does make it a film with something to say (alongside all the pot-shots).

There's another great cameo from Neil Patrick Harris aka Doogie Howser, some more trippy nonsense and a realness to the H&K friendship - not bad for a film with a unicorn in it. It's a pretty mindless romp in some ways, ambling along from wacky adventure to wacky adventure, but that's also what makes this likable comedy work. 

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24th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

AC/DC: No Bull - The Director's Cut

(dir. David Mallet)

Sony

This 'legendary' concert from 1996 was shot on AC/DC's Ballbreaker tour, before a bull-ring full of adoring Spanish fans. A brief intro sees a giant polystyrene wrecking ball crash through a giant polysterene set, before Angus Young rushes through the rubble and the unforgettable chords of Back In Black deliver exactly whay you would want from this video.

Shoot To Thrill, Hell's Bells, Rock 'n Roll Ain't Noise Pollution..... all my Back In Black favourites are well represented, as well as a host of other classics (Thunderstruck, Girl Got Rhythm) and surprisingly few 'new' favourites. Some minor theatrics lead into Hells Bells, with Johnson swinging on a giant (polystyrene) bell, but otherwise it's pretty straight-up meat and potatoes from this great band.

The aged Angus (a mere 41 when this was shot) still pulls off the school boy shorts without a problem, often looking like the star of an 80's Peter Jackson horror movie - effortlessly Chuck Berry-ing around the stage with his casual style never dropping a note. Brian Johnson's smokey vocals sound forever stretched, but never quite crack - and while there's nothing spectacular about the filming of this concert, all the money is on the screen.

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3rd Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Gomorra

(Dir Matteo Garrone)

Fandango

Two kids decide to take on the local crime boss. A mafia-funded tailor decides to moonlight for a Chinese sweatshop. A politician looks for new sites to dump toxic waste. A mob money man decides he's had enough. A grocery boy gets drawn into an escalating turf war.

Dizzying reinvention of the mafia movie, based on the nonfiction book by Roberto Saviano. Far from the glamour of The Godfather or even The Sopranos, this is more like a Naples version of The Wire. We're thrown into the middle of five stories, which build up a crushing portrait of a city in chaos; it's not so much that the system has failed here, but that even the crime culture which has stepped into the void seems to have spiralled out of control, light years from the honour amongst thieves myth we've seen time and again. 

It's beautifully shot, with the housing estates where the bulk of the action takes place rising up like decaying Mayan pyramids. Scenes are artfully constructed, with details like a freshly manicured hand or a statue of Jesus being winched down an estate balcony standing out amidst the action. That's not to suggest that this elegant movie glosses over the trauma and social breakdown - far from it. Violence is ever-present, brutally casual and everyday. It's a bewildering experience, as we float from story to story and back again, wondering how they connect - and also wondering how any of the characters can possibly hope to escape the lives they've found themselves in. 

At 137 mins, it's a long haul, but well worth it. Strong contender for one of the films of 2008.

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1st Oct 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Recount

(dir. Jay Roach)

HBO Films/ More 4

Fantastic dissection of the madness of the 2000 US election, when the world was left trying to work out what a hanging chad was and why it was keeping Al Gore from becoming President.

Even though you know the outcome (Bush stole it, Iraq 2.0 kicked off, thousands of people died) it's hard not to be swept up by the Democrats determination to play it out fairly and get the votes recounted. There's so much guff and propaganda talked about "democracy" from freedom lovers like Bush, that when you see what it actually comes down to up close and in action (adults arguing over tiny bits of paper on confusing ballot papers and what indentations may or may not signify), it's hard not to be at the very least, a little cynical.

At the same time, it presents a pretty forensic examination of the Republican attitude, and shows just how they manage to get their worldview across so fervently, using an intoxicating combination of lies, coercion, legal wrangling and attacks to simply wear down the nation - effectively planting the argument that the recount process was simply going on too long, so Gore really had better acquiesce because everyone was getting bored of trying to figure it out. Madness, but totally inspired media logic.

With a cast that includes Kevin Spacey, Bob Balaban, Ed Begley, Jr., Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary, Bruce McGill and Tom Wilkinson this is a quality outing, pushing the story along with real-life news footage and reconstructions.

It's already been on in the US, More4 are showing it 9pm, Fri 3 Oct - just before the first Vice-Presidential debate.

For further insight into the inner workings of the modern republican dirty tricks machine, BBC Four are showing Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story in their Storyville strand in a few weeks time, another essential recent history lesson.

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29th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet