Year: 2016 Director: Adam McKay

Declaration of interest straight up. I work in the financial markets in the education area these days, so I know a lot about what happened during the global financial crisis, the shenanigans that went on and I know the jargon. So I am coming from a different angle to someone either wanting to have a stimulating night at the movies or learn about what caused the GFC. The Big short is a reference to shorting the market. which means you sell something you don’t own and hope to buy it back at a lower price before you have to settle.So you sell higher than you buy which is the reverse of buying something then hopefully selling it when it goes up. At the time the markets were in a major bull run ( rising market) so people taking a negative view was very much going against the tide. The movie focusses on a few characters that latch onto the realisation that the mortgage market in america is extremely vulnerable due to por lending practises and the financial markets are ,in turn extremely vulnerable because of the many financial instruments created based on these underlying mortgages. » Continue Reading.

Year: 2016 Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

It’s January and after the Christmas blockbusters here come the Oscar-friendly movies. It is well-known that a sure path to that best actor statuette is to suffer for your art/play someone who suffers in their life. So Leonardo Di Caprio goes all frostbitten here in search of glory, playing early nineteenth-century guide and trapper Hugh Glass whose true story of abandonment in the South Dakota wilderness after a bear attack has inspired many re-tellings, of which this is the most recent. It’s clearly one of the founding stories of the American frontier, stressing the will of the individual to overcome all obstacles and beat the odds.

The pre-release guff about The Revenant focused on how much Di Caprio had really been mauled by a bear, and more credibly the general extreme weather conditions of the shoot. The bear attack is quite extra-ordinary and caps a quite brilliant first act that – IMHO – the rest of the movie struggles to live up to. The chaotic breaking up of the fur-trapping expedition that has brought Glass and his comrades to this extreme environment is a brilliantly paced mixture of violence and emotions.

In many » Continue Reading.

Year: 2012 Director: Shinichiro Watanabe

(We worked our way through this earlier this year, and I meant to do a Nights In then, but life (apathy) interfered. Tigger’s jazz thread has bought it back to mind, so here goes.)

Kids On The Slope (Sakamichi no apallon) is a twelve part anime series based on the manga of the same name. Taking place in early 60s Kyushu, it is the story of Kaoru, a timid high school student who has to start at a new school thanks to his father’s move to a new job. He is a classical pianist, but soon falls in with Sentaro, a wild and undisciplined student who is also a drummer. Sentaro introduces him to jazz, and they begin to play together in the basement of the local jazz record shop, with the store owner joining in on double bass. The owner’s daughter, Ritsuko, becomes the third main character, and the narrative of the series is driven by the shifting relationships between them. These various love triangles can get a bit wearyingly adolescent, but the plot is secondary to the joy in music that is expressed in every episode. Jazz fans will recognise a parade of » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Robert Gordon & Morgan Neville

This is a documentary about the 1968 Television debates between liberal Gore Vidal and Conservative William Buckley centred around the Republican and Democratic conventions. These debates were an idea that ABC had because they didn’t have the money to cover either convention fully like CBS & NBC.

Both Vidal and Buckley were failed politicians, having both run for office earlier in the sixties and lost but otherwise had become successes as authors and social commentators. This finds Vidal just after the publication of Myra Breckinridge had become a cause célèbre, and Buckley cosying up to Ronald Reagan as he tried to define Conservatism for the future decades.

Both men came into the debates detesting each other and coming from polar opposites, Vidal gay ultra-left & Buckley Catholic establishment right-wing so from the first debate sparks flew and the animosity just grew until a flashpoint which shocked America and troubled Buckley until the day he died. That outburst probably set the tone for the political debates (or non debates) that we suffer today.

The film has plenty of wonderful archive footage especially the 1968 Democratic convention riots and is very enjoyable look » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Francis Lawrence

I didn’t sign on for the Harry Potter films, as the kids mostly saw them on DVD. Lord of the Rings too. We bailed from the Hobbit after the first one. I have however made it to the end of The Hunger Games with the minimoles. Mockingjay Part One’s end felt so abrupt it was if the editors decided ‘2 hours 20 – ok we can fade to black now’ . So on with Part two. I wonder how survivors of the full Hobbit felt, as this was another 2 hours 20 minutes of film with an hour of story to stretch to fit.

Focus on the positives you say. Well it looks good – all grey post-industrial war zone. Donald Sutherland continues to be an absolute hoot as the evil president. He gets way too little screen time. There’s two shocking sequences that one reviewer correctly identified as pushing the 12A envelope – one in a tunnel, and one which Andrew Eldritch would describe as a slight case of overbombing. Peeta is much more entertaining as a Homeland-style will he/won’t he human bomb than as a weepy love interest.

But it is so slow. » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Frank Spotnitz (Writer)

Based on the Phillip K. Dick counterfactual novel this 10 part series is available on Amazon Video, but probably coming to Blu-Ray/DVD at some point next year. It shows world where the Allies lost WW2 and the Nazis and Japanese control most of the world (not sure about South America), Nazis control Europe and Africa & Japan Asia but they share the US (Nazis-East Coast, Japs-West Coast) with a ‘Neutral Zone in the middle.

The story revolves around Julia Crain, whose half-sister is involved with the resistance, Frank Frink her boyfriend with Jewish ancestry, Joe Blake a new recruit to East Coast resistance, Nobusuke Tagomi the trade minister of the Japanese Pacific states and Obergruppenführer John Smith an SS officer in New York.

Their stories revolve around some Newsreels which may or may not be real and add the Science fiction element of the story.

We really enjoyed this, the first episode ends with a cracking twist and the last with multiple stories coming together in a pretty satisfying way. And with other couple of twists that we didn’t see coming (but that may be just us!). It is fairly grim and complicated » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Sean Evans

This is the dvd version of the cd reviewed elsewhere on the site recently. At two and a half hours plus, it is quite lengthy , but then there is a lot to fit in – the full live concert performance of The Wall, interspersed with the ‘travelogue’ sections where Waters visits sites of personal significance throughout Europe, accompanied by friends and family. Additionally, a couple of short bonus films are thrown in for good measure as extras.

Those who were lucky enough to witness the concerts in person will know that this is a show where you really can see where every penny of the ticket money was spent. A spectacular performance, beautifully filmed and captured in state of the art sound quality.

It would have been nice if perhaps an extended version of the ‘Who Do We Think We Are’ style documentary footage had been included as an extra on the dvd where it could be viewed as a completely separate entity, rather than interrupting the flow of the concert.

The bonus features on the blu-ray version include footage from the O2 concert featuring appearances from a certain Messrs Gilmour and Mason.

Might » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Jeanie Finlay

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King? When Elvis P shat himself to heaven in 1977 millions cried for him along with their lost youth and memories. Yet how can Elvis be dead when we have his music – the people cried, particularly when a new disc from Jerry Lee Lewis arrives with an Elvis-y sounding singer billed as ‘Orion’ duetting with The Killer. Then a masked man with swirling cape, slicked back quiff and that voice is ‘Reborn’ on the front of an LP showing him also prone in a coffin. Can this be real – is the Pelvis back from his toilet break?

In this intriguing documentary we find that Jimmy Ellis was given the dream he had always wanted – to be a star with adoring and willing girls at his feet, big selling records (but not in the traditional sense) and sell out concerts but with a hefty price. He would have to wear the mask whenever he was in public and would only be popular because he sounded like andor people thought he was Elvis back from the dead. Signed to Sun Records by the unscrupulous (and that’s being » Continue Reading.

Year: 2014 Director: Justin Roiland/ Dan Harmon Producers

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Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Futurama, Galaxy Quest, Doctor Who, Family Guy, Community

Year: 2015 Director: Brian Helgeland

In my final years at school, the non official text of choice was ‘The Profession of Violence’ by John Pearson, the semi-official biography of The Kray Twins. Pearson, it seems, was given the nod by Ron and Reg to tell their story around the time they were finally banged up, fully aware a long term was about to be worked up them, courtesy of an establishment keen to be perceived as still fully in the political driving seat of late 1960’s Britain. The author however, exceeded his brief by delivering a book that successfully perpetuated the Kray myth by putting their rise in a sociological context without wholly kowtowing to the glamorous image the twins apparently craved. Despite its ambiguous, slightly diffident, possibly aleatory comedic tone, the book became the undisputed bible for all Kray aficionados. For example, Pearson’s quirky timbre is perfectly, wantonly, echoed in the Monty Python tale of The Piranha Brothers, one of whom (Dinsdale) used violence whilst the other (Doug) favoured sarcasm: ‘he knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire …’ ‘Legend’, a truly awful title which in and of itself provides an instant review » Continue Reading.

Year: 1981 Director: Penelope Spheeris

One night in the late eighties, BBC2 had a Metal Night (think of what BBC4 do on a Friday these days) presented by Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark (parodied in The Simpsons as “Boobarella”) and they screened ‘The Decline Of Western Civilisation Part II: The Metal Years’. A documentary, or if you will, rockumentary on the LA metal scene in the late 80’s which threw up bands like Guns N Roses. Footage of almost made it new acts is interspersed with comments and “skits” with stars like Lemmy, Ozzy, Paul n Gene from Kiss and infamously a sizzled Chris Welch from WASP floating in a pool watched by his mother. Years before MTV, Spheeris knew the sight of Ozzy making breakfast in a leopard-skin dressing gown was gold.

Almost a decade before the same filmmaker had explored another youth cult in the same city as the fledgling LA punk scene crawled out of basements and squats in bands like X, Black Flag, The Germs, Circle Jerks and Fear. The gig violence, attitude and lifestyle depicted so enraged the LA police chief Daryl Gates that he called for the film to be banned within the » Continue Reading.

Year: 2010 Director: Michael Madsen

100,000 years is a long time. Just consider how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly long it is. I mean, you might think it would take you a long time to read Douglas Adams’ four Hitchhikers books, listen to all the radio shows, watch the spinoff series and endure the movie, but that would be peanuts compared to 100,000 years. Coincidentally, 100,000 years (give or take a couple) is how long we believe nuclear waste will remain hazardous to human life. With this in mind the Finns have begun construction of a repository, burrowing 5km underground into bedrock to safely store their nuclear waste. This is an unprecedented undertaking. The site must remain intact for a thousand centuries; the entire history of large scale construction is less than a tenth of that. Danish Film-maker Michael Madsen speaks with those involved in this extraordinary operation which will not be complete for a hundred years. They are confident the Finnish bedrock will be indifferent to likely wars and environmental catastrophies, but they do worry about human intrusion. Among the dilemmas the builders face is how to communicate the danger of the site to the citizens of an inconceivably distant future » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Chris McQuarrie

Let’s get something straight from the start. This is a movie reaching a broad demographic – represented in our party by three parents and four children aged 9-13. It’s a broad movie, offering thrills, a few laughs and two hours of entertainment in the dark. It’s not Haneke and several years of taking children to big Hollywood action movies have taught me to:

Forget about the plot. The world will be saved. Tom will not fall off the building/airplane/motorbike and smear himself all over the tarmac. Here there is a convoluted Skyfallesque plot about a secret organisation of rogue agents, which Tom and Simon and Jeremy and Ving have to fight by going rogue. It’s called Rogue Nation. We get it. Everyone is rogue. I bet if they went to Caffe Nero the baristas would have gone rogue.

Enjoy the set-pieces. There’s a pre-credit one on a plane. The best one in this is done very stylishly at the Vienna State Opera – all kinds of assassins turning their brass instruments into weapons, and surely they’ve seen the Marx Brothers A Night At The Opera when we get everyone swinging from the fly floor on » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Olivier Megaton

You wouldn’t say the original Taken was great, but it had its moments, most of them in the first thirty minutes. Liam Neeson simultaneously essaying twitchy, nervous parent and special forces badass was cool, and his ‘particular set of skills’ speech can still tingle the spine.

However, the film went downhill from there. For all his talk, Neeson’s skills weren’t especially particular. If you were looking for spycraft you’d come to the wrong place. He was all brawn and no Bourne. Things continued in the same direction for Taken 2 (more of the same, only with shit action scenes) and they pretty much reach rock bottom in number three.

The one thing to recommend Taken 3 is that it doesn’t simply rehash a kidnapped-family-member plotline. No, one of them is dead this time, and murder-suspect Neeson is trying to escape capture (by dogged cop Forest Whitaker, the only good thing in this mess) while simultaneously investigating/avenging the death. As stories go, it’s not exactly original and it only nods at what was appealing about the » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Henry Hobson

Me, I love zombies, but even I have to admit to being a bit over them by now. And after ‘Zombieland’, ‘In The Flesh’ and ‘Warm Bodies’, I’ve had my fill of ‘a new take’ on the genre as well. However, for one reason or another, I made an exception for Maggie, ‘a new take’ on the zombie genre starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m always a bit wary of praising performances in films but Arnie is really good in this, like maybe the best he’s ever been. Really it’s only the accent to reminds you that he’s Sir Arnold of I’ll Be Backshire. Otherwise he pretty much inhabits the role of a loving father who must come to terms with his daughter’s impending zombie transformation, not to mention his inability to do anything about it. As you might imagine, seeing the man who played John Matrix made powerless in the face of a mere virus is the real kicker here, adding a layer of autumn-years nuance that really lifts the film, while Abigail Breslin as the pre-zombie in question is outstanding. Nevertheless, the film itself doesn’t quite rise to the level of its stars. The zombie-integration » Continue Reading.

Year: 1971 Director: Robert Altman

The psychological horror film, Images, is one of Robert Altman’s lesser-known films. It was released in 1971, between more familiar and popular films from the director; his revisionist Western, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and his revisionist and ironic treatment of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.

Images is not typical Altman. In many respects it is a more conventional and commodified film to the style of film-making closely associated with him: multi-layered stories, characters cross-talking, a withering and languid “anti-establishment” gaze that suggests everyone involved, including the viewer, is gingerly working their way through a stalled recovery from a bad 60’s trip.

Images is a tight chamber piece, filmed mostly with interiors and with a limited cast. The plot, such as it is, is simple and functional. So far so normal. The conventionality and simplicity of plot and setting are important because what Altman wants to do is to warp our perceptions of normality. What we witness in Images is how different another person’s normality can become over the course of the film. That person is Cathryn, portrayed by Susannah York. She is a children’s author, married without children and living what appears at first » Continue Reading.

Year: 1949 Director: Carol Reed

This is a review of the new Blu-ray 4K restoration.

I think that most people know the story of The Third Man. Divided Vienna, Black Market Penicillin (in fact Black Market everything) , the loyal Anna, the everyman Holly, the evil Harry Lime, a man so bad he isn’t in the gutter he is literally in the sewer and of course the Cuckoo clock. Add the Dutch angles, the decent(ish) Major Calloway, the mainly German speaking wonderful supporting cast and one of the best soundtracks in Cinema history from Anton Karas and this is a perfect movie.

This new edition is sparkling (as much as a film this dark in places can be) and clean as a whistle. The soundtrack is clear and as good as a 66 year old film will ever get.

The extras include audio commentaries with Guy Hamilton (who chased Welles all over Europe when he didn’t turn up on time) and few docs including a really interesting one on the restoration plus interviews with Graham Greene and Joseph Cotton. Also included is a neat and informative booklet, some really nice art cards and a small poster. And the set » Continue Reading.

Year: 2014 Director: Bill Pohlad

Though it’s been out for at least 6 months, it seems the Brian Wilson bio-pic ‘Love and Mercy’ has only now reached Australia, or at any rate, just reached me. Bio-pics as a genre are always a bit hit and miss, the best ones I’ve always found tending to be about people no longer with us, the exception to that particular rule being the magnificent ‘Raging Bull’. Part of the difficulty is the sensitivity required to portray the subject in a positive light; not many Directors have Scorsese’s ability or perception to depict light and shade without overdosing on one or the other. Therein lies the problem with Bill Pohlad’s approach to Brian Wilson, who’s represented as a genius, no more no less throughout (albeit a tortured, fucked up, victimised but ultimately rehabilitated one). Played by 2 different actors with no similarity whatsoever – Paul Dano as the young BW – slightly goofy, chubby but obviously mega-talented and John Cusack as the older version, thin, overmedicated and needy but quite clearly a genius – this ubiquitous assessment is slapped on as thick as the pancake makeup Cusack is evidently wearing. ‘Who do you think you » Continue Reading.

Year: 2014 Director: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi

Some vampires reveal the day-to-day minutiae of vampiric life in the run down squalor of their New Zealand house – having to do household chores, not getting into nightclubs, falling out with friends, etc.

Comedy is the most difficult cinematic genre to get right. There are very few modern comedies that work really well. Spinal Tap, obviously, is one. Shaun Of The Dead another. This New Zealand film has the deadpan mockumentary style of the former and the spoof horror theme of the latter. And it also shares the same relentless quality of hilarious scenes, laugh-out-loud moments and quotable dialogue as both those films. High praise indeed, but it’s one of a small group of genuine lol 5 star classic comedies. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a must-see.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Aside from Tap and Shaun, I see vague comparisons with Wes Anderson, Kusturica, early Woody Allen.

Year: 2015 Director: Asif Kapadia

No matter how short a life is, you can’t tell the whole story in 165 minutes and that’s the main problem with Asif ‘Senna’ Kapadia’s documentary of the short, tragic life of Amy Winehouse. Not that it’s a bad movie, it’s anything but. Through the use of copious, highly revealing home videos provided by her first manager, Nick Shymansky, Amy’s obvious talent and undoubted charisma effortlessly emerge, leading through to her horrific, public decline as fame, addiction and isolation exact their costly price. As someone with not much more than a general awareness of her music, I was highly impressed by Amy’s oeuvre, a fantastic voice when on its game and a surprisingly (for me anyway) poetic feel for words; most of which were so starkly literal it’s hard to understand why no one saw fit to anticiapte the problems ahead. Though, of course, they did. Everyone, it seems, knew there were likely to be troubles afoot – friends, management, family, even it seems, fans. ‘Rehab’ is discussed in detail, both the song and the potential intervention. This is where the film starts naming names, Amy’s dad, Mitch, one time cabbie and VIz magazine character » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: Ana Lily Amirpour

I had several hours to kill in London yesterday so I thought I would take in a matinee. This being the capital I had the choice of more arthouse fare so decided against films starring WWE wrestlers and went for ‘The first Iranian Vampire Western’. The streets of Taft, California stand in for Bad City in Iran, eerily quiet and deserted in best Sergio Leone style, whose only figures are junkies, pimps, hookers, losers and those dying to escape. Arash is definitely the latter, working as a gardener for a rich family, putting most of his earnings into buying a car which is cruelly taken from him by the local drug dealer and the rest to support his drug addled father. The town is haunted by a vicious female vampire who preys on the immoral male members of the community. Arash meets the titular girl walking home alone at night stumbling from a party, coming down from a drug trip and their intense relationship is the film’s heart. Shot in black and white it gives off the air of a classic 1930’s horror with little dialogue exchanged between the two – its all in » Continue Reading.

Year: 2015 Director: George Miller

The long delayed Fury Road finally hits the UK and so I went to see for myself whether it lives up to the hype. Tom Hardy is suitably taciturn as the titular Max, who we meet chomping on a two-headed lizard, and we are plunged headlong into the action as Max is pursued and captured by the Warboys of the hideously deformed Immortan Jon. Taken back to The Citadel, Max is shorn, tattooed and used as a “Universal Donor”, pumping his blood into Warboys in need of a top up. Things don’t stay still for long as Charlize Theron’s Furiosa decides to kidnap Immortan Jon’s favourite “wives” in a War Rig tanker and head out across the desert for The Green Place, hotly pursued by all manner of crazies, including Max strapped to the front of a car on a pole as a mobile “blood bag”. There ensues one almighty car chase across the post-apocalyptic wastes. The look of the film is gorgeous, all metal and diesel and searing red desert and it obviously harks back to the feel of Mad Max 2. This is a good thing. The action set pieces are astonishing, made » Continue Reading.