A bridge too far.

A double bill of:

Last King of SCotland

Followed by

Blood Diamond.

...on top of a series of articles on the Today programme on atrocities in the Congo I'm thinking about going for a drink!

Forest Whittiker was excellent as Amin, and the rest of the cast put in good support.

I would rec. both films - certainly NOT light viewing; Man's inhumanity to Man.

M

Finally got around to the Bourne Ultimatum. Very very good. Almost the best of the trilogy?

Jay

Smokey & The Bandit

There's a blast from the past - all in glorius mono.

All looks very dated, but saved by the infectious feeling of fun, some good one liners and the cuteness that is Sally Field.

M

Not from DVD, but saw Iron Man earlier in the cinema. I did not get it, but then perhaps I wouldn't! Nice to get out though!

Looking at the films on offer, I wonder if there are any serious thought provoking new films and where these might be seen?

I shall go and see the new Bond film when it is released ...

george

Light hearted, simple French film. Enjoyable.

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Not from DVD, but saw Iron Man earlier in the cinema. I did not get it, but then perhaps I wouldn't! Nice to get out though!

Looking at the films on offer, I wonder if there are any serious thought provoking new films and where these might be seen?

I shall go and see the new Bond film when it is released ...

george

Took the family to see it on Saturday evening.

I did enjoy it mainly because of Robert Downey Jr with good support from Gwyneth Paltrow & Jeff Bridges.

BUT, I didn't appreciate them using the ongoing disaster in Afghanistan as a backdrop for pretty mindless, if enjoyable, pap.

When our people are over there spilling their blood for us it felt uncomfortable to me.

Standard Marvel fare: Person is given / develops super-human powers and uses extreme violence to solve an issue by killing a easy and well defined target.

On the whole I enjoyed 'Son of Rambow' more.

I'm looking forward to Persepolis. I think the major studios are locked into major budget minimum risk releases.

M

How the west was really won...

Made in the anti-war film era [1970] and makes it's point quite shockingly in places.
A good film for educational sentiment, rather than entertainment.

nymph

Enchanted


OK I admit it I loved this film, as did the rest of the family.

A disarming lack of irony. GREAT family entertainment.

The star for me was the cartoon made real chipmonk Pip, and his attempts to mime to the Prince what was happening - brilliant animation and very funny.

Best thing Disney have done in YEARS, not including the vicarious brownie points for Pixar.

M

quote:

Originally posted by naim_nymph:


How the west was really won...



nymph

A great movie!

The ultimate life of a mind.

Gian,
A real treat for you.
Haim

Bowling for Columbine



Polemic? Yes.
Rhetoric? Yes.

Thought provoking? Hell YES.

Well worth hiring.

M

2 Days in Paris

I enjoyed it - glad I hired it, not one that I'll buy.

M

3:10 To Yuma



Visceral soundtrack.

Enjoyed the extras. The film itself I'm still not sure about.

Crowe & Bale are always watchable. The film has been tagged as being the best western since Forgiven. Now that was a film that had true grit (sic); this doesn't have the feeling of real, but cartoon, violence.

I did enjoy some of the verbal interplay between the main characters.

**Spoiler Warning**

Frankly there were just too many points for me where I would have thought the 'posse' would just have strung Crowe up - or put a bullet through his head.

As the extras pointed out the town folk in The West were pretty resilient - would they really have taken money to shoot their Marshall? As the extras pointed out they were more inclined to arm themselves and shoot armed gangs that threatened their towns.

Anything that has people running through a hail of bullets starts to lose my sense of suspended disbelief - especially where they are aiming for gritty realism.

Finally the ending just was schizophrenic. The juxtaposition of the emotion with the father & son against whistling for the horse seemed to try and mix the ending of Forgiven with that of Cat Ballou!

I do think it is worth watching - and I bought it up front; don't think I would if I had watched it first.

M

Michael Clayton


Good film.

The plot is fairly straight forward, and told in a refreshingly straight forward way.

I don't know why but I always find Tom Wilkinson doing an American accent distracting - but he sells his character well.

Clooney is very good at picking films to make - interesting seeing the list of Executive Producers on this film.

Not any form of AV spectacular - but well worth your time.

M

"Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" A BlueRay disc played on my son's PS3. For a 30 year old film visually stunning. The disc contains the original theatre version (which we watched) a special edition and the director's cut.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is very good indeed. Tried it using a PS3 into may system with CRT which was good, but then tried it on a Sharp Blu-ray/Onkyo 875 with Panasonic PTAE2000E and that was indeed awesome!

Watched Enchanted day before yesterday. Cutesy twist on the typical Disney fairy tale. Worth watching once...I guess.

Junebug last night.
Wasn't really expecting much, but this film really draws you in to the characters and some of the understated acting was superb, alongwith a tasteful use of background music[Haydn's quartets amongst others], which worked really well.Definitely worth another viewing before I send it back to the rental company.
Simon

"In The Valley of Elah" An extremely powerful anti- war film. Tommy Lee Jones gets better with age.

We watched it a couple of days ago Chris, and I agree T.L. Jones was superb. A very disturbing watch.

Yes it was Tony. It seemed to miss out on a lot of ballyhoo when it was released.

And now for something completely different! "27 Dresses" on a region1 dvd. I bought it for Rachel cos she loves her "girlie films" but this one was perfect for a rather sleepy evening with too much anti-histamine in my system!

Finished watching Season II.

Gian,
I think that you will like this serie.
Haim

quote:

Originally posted by Haim Ronen:


Finished watching Season II.

Gian,
I think that you will like this serie.
Haim

Thank you Haim!
Got this lately but still have to watch it