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Tafelberg
Reviews
Kekexili (2004)
Like a Western
If you have a taste for something non-Hollywood, and a liking for vast barren spaces, Kekexili (pronounced Cuca Seely) is highly recommended.
It is part of the Tibetan high plateau, and the antelope on it have been poached almost to extinction. The patrol, all unofficial volunteers in 4x4s, track the poachers across the arid plains and snow-dusted mountains almost to the point of insanity. It's like an old- fashioned cowboy movie, with different scenery and a different flavor. Based on real events, it is very professionally done and holds one's interest right to the end. In Tibetan and Chinese with English subtitles.
Apollo 18 (2011)
Too long at 76 minutes
After 76 minutes the movie ends and the final credits start rolling to the gentle notes of the Christmas carol "We three kings of Orient are".
By that time I had been yawning for half an hour.
Give the producers and set designers their due. The sets are fantastic. They looked 100% realistic. I was totally sold on the idea that I with a '70s Apollo mission on the moon, and I'm a space nut from way back.
But stunning visuals can take you only so far. After ten minutes or so you want something to happen, and thereafter something new. But this was essentially the same few scenes repeated over and over.
I feel sorry for the actors. They had nothing to work with. It was all, see something odd, react. See something odd, react. Try to contact Houston. See something scary, react. See something scary, react. Try to contact Houston.
They never really took charge and tried to master the situation. There was little dynamic between them, no dispute about what was happening or the best course of action, or who was in charge. Basically, no plot development at all. Just reaction to circumstances.
La bête humaine (1938)
After 75 years, still fantastic
This is one of those movies where a little thing leads to a cover-up, which leads to bigger things, which have to be covered up in their turn, and so on. It's a working-class morality tale, a cross between melodrama and film noir, and brilliantly compelling.
Lantier (Gabin) is an engine driver. Together with his stoker Pecqueux (Carette), a lugubrious man with a cigarette always on his lips and a girl in every depot, they speed though the countryside in a celebrated opening sequence that captures the power and awesomeness of the great steam locomotive (and is an early use of shaky cam).
They have time off at the station while the locomotive is repaired. Lantier visits his family where we learn he gets murderous impulses he can hardly control. He nearly strangles the pretty young Flore (Brunoy), stopping only when a train rushes by on the nearby tracks. In fact, the trains are his lifesaver. He knows he is safe from his impulses when he is with "Lison", as he calls his locomotive.
Back at the station, the station-master Roubaud (Ledoux) tells off a man with a dog. - What's the problem with my dog? - The regulations don't allow dogs in the compartments. - I don't like your tone of voice. Do you know who I am? - I don't need to know. I make no distinctions among passengers.
Alas, it is a sugar baron who can make trouble for Roubaud. He asks his wife Severine (Simon) to pull strings with her wealthy godfather Grandmorin (Berlioz). They can combine this with a shopping trip to Paris.
In Paris they stay with Victoria, Severine's mother's friend, who is the lavatory attendant at the station and also Pecqueux's wife. It illustrates one of the strengths of the movie, which shows well the lives and esprit de corps of this group of working men who must move from place to place and stay in railway housing with their colleagues. They are a friendly bunch who know each other and stick up for each other.
The perils of having a wife who is too young and pretty for you! In Paris middle-aged Roubaud learns Grandmorin is Severine's lover. Enraged at being cuckolded, Roubaud gets Severine to invite Grandmorin on a train trip, where the couple murder the wealthy man. Lantier is on the train and sees them, but does not give them away. Severine starts an affair with Lantier to keep him quiet, and things go downhill from there.
The train photography, Jean Gabin's acting, and the glimpses of railway peoples' lives were the stand-outs for me, but in all departments this movie stands comparison with anything made 75 years later. It's my first Jean Renoir film I've seen. It won't be my last.
25th Hour (2002)
Pointless and boring
I can't believe the high rating this film gets. It is so boring. After an hour you realise nothing is going to happen. Unfortunately, you have another hour and a bit to sit through.
If you listen to the commentary you get that old cliché "New York is another character in the movie". Yeah. It's like an actor you owe a favour to so you kludge a part onto the script for them. Ed Norton wanders about New York, sure, but what does the city MEAN to him? What memories and feelings and significant events? Nada. He's just walking his dog.
The famed "fuck you New York" monologue wasn't in the draft of the script I saw, and wasn't justified. What meaning did these people and places have to Ed? Another kludge.
The flashbacks. In the writer's commentary Benioff said Lee wanted to avoid tacky 70s-style captions "Thee weeks previously" or whatever. They should have used them. I had a hard time figuring out the flashbacks from present day. What's wrong with sacrificing a bit of style if it makes things easy for the viewer?
The Barry Pepper character: Lee goes to all the trouble of building a trading floor set so he can show us what a badass risk-taker the character is. Then never uses the information. So what if he has balls of steel? He is never called upon to make a risky decision again. That was screen time wasted.
If you want to be thrilled, entertained, mystified and amazed, see something else. The only good thing in this movie is the title sequence with abstract-looking shots of the 9/11 memorial searchlights.
The Debt (2010)
Good story but falls flat in the middle.
We meet Helen Mirren in '90s Israel as a celebrated Mossad agent who was one of the three who pulled off a daring mission in East Berlin in the '60s. When Tom Wilkinson her ex-husband and second of the three informs her the third, Ciaran Hinds, has committed suicide, we realise All Is Not As It Seems.
Flashback to '60s East Berlin. Jesper Christensen is suspected of being an infamous concentration camp doctor. He is now a gynaecologist, which explains Jessica Chastain's presence. In the tensest part of the movie the trio identify him, snatch him, and take him to the exfiltration point, which is where things go wrong and they return to the safe house.
At this point you might be looking forward to a chase through an East Berlin swarming with alerted Vopos as they find some ingenious way to get the doctor over the wall.
You'd be disappointed. Instead, they sit in the safe house getting angsty and playing mind games while they wait for orders. More than 20 minutes (I timed it) of deflated expectations.
It picks up later as the older ones deal with the consequences of youthful decisions, but never reaches the heights of the first part of the movie.
In addition, the relationship between Chastain and the other two agents, intense Sam Worthington (young Hinds) and charismatic Marton Csokas (young Wilkinson), didn't ring true. Maybe if Worthington had been the leader and decision-maker her attraction would be explainable.
Some ingenious twists, and excellent performances from Mirren, Chastain, Csokas and Christensen, show us what a really good movie this could have been if better structured.
Ironclad (2011)
Disappointing historical action drama
The dialogue consists mostly of Oof! Eugh! Aaargh! Raar! There are lots of very close up action scenes. It is hard to make out what is going on, but judging from the flying gore, it isn't pretty.
Paul Giamatti, miscast as King John, must take Rochester Castle before he can complete his revenge on the barons who forced him to sign the Magna Carta. The castle must hold until help arrives from the French.
Under pressure from the long siege, during which there are intermittent attempts to storm the battlements, the defenders try to hold things together. This beleaguered group of actors do what they can, but as Noble Warriors one and all with nary a traitor among them, they don't have much drama to deal with.
The filmmakers try hard. I thought the scenes of storming the battlements were the best. But the lack of budget and an uninspired script combine to make this a rather average film.
Attack the Block (2011)
Good movie but got the balance wrong
It was a good movie, so why would I hesitate to recommend it to my friends?
Because the concept, aliens land in a council estate and have to deal with chavs, is clearly going to be a comedy with a bit of social commentary. If you knew nothing about the movie, you'd be thinking, "Oh boy, those aliens won't know what hit them. I'd like to see them deal with what we have to deal with every day."
But instead of comedy with a bit of social commentary, it was social commentary with a bit of comedy. And the commentary could be summed up as, these are poor misunderstood kids and the system treats them badly. Whereas the average viewer thinks these are nasty little thugs and they need to be taught a lesson on how to be decent human beings.
Gripes aside, I thought it was a good movie. The monsters were great. Particularly effective were the teeth, which looked like glowing eyes from a distance and shark mouths from close up. The film was well plotted with a good explanation of why their block was being attacked. The fights and acting were okay but not great. The dialogue was apparently authentic, but it sounded made up, like the droogs' language in A Clockwork Orange. Maybe it could have been toned down a bit. Some of the action up and down the corridors became repetitive.
One thing I missed was vignettes of how other people in the block reacted to the invasion. Just brief clips. The filmmaker lost an opportunity for laughs there.
With more humour and more humanity learned by the protagonists, this could have been a great and entertaining classic. As it is, it remains good but a bit preachy.