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carefully constructed contribution!
Seven Psychopaths
That “difficult second…” applies to the world of cinema as much as to albums or novels. Some achieve: Welles with the sublime The Magnificent Ambersons or Mike Nichols with The Graduate; but how does writer/ director Martin McDonagh follow the brilliant In Bruges?
Well this time lightning has not struck twice but Seven Psychopaths is like no other movie I have seen, and well worth a look.
After a brilliant start (evocative of Sam Fuller) the movie moves to pinball machine mode-you never quite know where it will go next- and the mood changes are staggering. Blood yes, but laugh out loud jokes as well and perhaps even profundity.
Clever? Yes. Too clever by half? Probably. But better than going running in the rain? Certainly!
Erm,....getting a little soft in your post-chair are we??
Really wanted to enjoy In Bruges but somehow it just didn't grab me as much as I hoped. And I adore Bruges!
Will give this one a look though.
But for gritty realism, I had an unexpected dose of it last night. I have occasionally stumbled on bits of 'Get Carter' but never managed to see the film right through. Put that right last night. What a tough little film. Simple enough story. London hood goes to Newcastle to investigate death of brother and exact revenge and gets dragged through a grubby hinterland of vice, corruption and plain nastiness....which triggers the same reactions in him until its gets personal. Shakesperean ending. The cinematography is great, often setting scenes with characters working at long range in crowded places to increase the sense of detachment....or again in wide open spaces to enhance the desolation of the story and place. Caine is great, colouring the wide boy alfie facet with a genuinely nasty psychopathic tint. But the denouement is great. Truly bleak and miserable
OK it sounds like a downbeat movie, and it is. But it captures the seamy underbelly of the dying 60's dream as it turned sour in the 70's to perfection. I loved it!
Did they? Bast*rds! Always copying and ruining our crown jewels! Witness Italian Job! Arrggghh! I mean, they don't have to. They can do their own so well. Dog Day Afternoon for example. Now thats a cracking little movie. Again, simple story well told with believable characters.
I saw the Hobbit yesterday at Bradford Imax in 3D (but haven't a clue whether it was 24 fps or 48 fps :) ). As a self confessed Lord of the Rings geek and expert I'll firstly say here and now that I did not like the LOTR films very much in that they cut too much of the story completely, glossed over too much, mispronounced key characters names, changed the story for the worse in a number of key places, completely ruined what the Ents were really (:) ) about and got the orcs all wrong in pretty much every way possible.
So going into The Hobbit I was expecting the worst. But..... it was brilliant :thumbup:
Casablanca (1942 dir Michael Curtiz)
The Daily Telegraph suggests that this will be the best film to be shown on TV during the holiday. Well as a timeless, flawless masterpiece it will be.
Like the Mona Lisa or the Taj Mahal it suffers from an apparent over-familiarity but, like them, it needs unjaundiced eyes (and ears) to appreciate its wonders. People may remember the perfect performances of a stellar cast-Bergman, Bogart, Lorre, Veight, Greenstreet- or As Time Goes By- but a great film starts with a great script and in this case Warner Brothers paid 75% of the total fees paid to all the actors for the original play and to the script writers.
And what they got in return is one of the most quoted film scripts in cinema history and a film of perfection.