Reviews

The dialogue is modelled on 'Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf' and similar plays, so it might be difficult for modern ears to appreciate.

Crowd-sourcing and the notion of the wisdom of crowds has its place. Quite often a useful place, but certainly not always.

IMDb, an excellent place to get information on popular films, can be very misleading with good films that happen not to be popular.

I'm pleased that I ignored the 6.5 score of Le Week-End - if I'd taken it seriously, I'd have missed an absolute gem of a film...

Probably not a film for the young-of-body - hence, presumably, the misleading score.

It's really good fun, though, if you've an ear for good English humour - I'm not quite sure why the film's blurb calls them a 'British couple', either, it nearly put me off. They're undoubtedly an English couple. The humour would have been quite different if they'd been Welsh, Irish or Scotch.

Excellent - a little repetitive, but otherwise excellent.

It's probably necessary to enjoy sushi to get the most from the film, but, if you do, it's quite a revelation.

I found it fascinating - I think I understand 'umami' is better ('[‹ Japanese umami deliciousness (1721 or earlier) ‹ uma-, stem of umai delicious + -mi, suffix forming abstract nouns from adjectives (but commonly written as if from -mi taste).] ' {OED}).

It is not just the taste of MSG, or the taste receptors for MSG, but more like the Japanese equivalent of the Gestalt, well, the Gestalt as applied to food.

They could have called it 'Zen and the art of Sushi'. I hadn't known that there was a Michelin 3- star sushi restaurant, but it's not that difficult to see why Jiro's is.

It's interesting how widely applicable the keys to excellence are - dedication, continual improvement and passion. The best ingredients, of course, and cultivating relationships with the best suppliers. The same in sushi as with anything else.

Environmentally sound too...

A masterpiece of postmodernism! This film succeeds in distilling, and then amplifying, everything that is wrong with Russian novels, whilst studiously avoiding contact with anything that is worthwhile.

It focuses, relentlessly, on costumes, mannerism, and style, whilst ignoring, deliberately, all substance.

Modern sensibilities are injected, forcibly, into every word spoken, every glance with no sympathy for the possibility that anything old fashioned could be good.

It consists of juxtaposed clips - some quite good, some even quoting, ironically (if such humourless vitriol cloud be considered ironic) from Tolstoy.

The set pieces are too wooden to be considered passable by a poor puppeteer.

Part of the brilliance of the postmodernism is revealed by the money saved by not having a continuity editor so that it could be spent on clothes.

The scriptwriter's contempt for history and the sensibilities and manners of the time is made clear in the deliberately anachronistic dialogue - where there is any dialogue.

Transforming such a thoughtful, wordy, argumentative and carefully plotted novel into a series of disjointed, scenes, with no characterisation, let alone character development, puts Tolstoy in his place as the minor scribbler that he clearly was - particularly as he made no effort to write his novels in the style of the world's greatest authors, who, as we know write for Mills & Boon.

The film, helpfully spares us any unnecessary suspense by returning to the theme of trains and train accidents regularly.

After cutting from scene to scene with furious rapidity, the film spend considerable time on a game of Mahjong - no doubt to emphasise the Russianness.

An example of the masterful subtlety is the long scene that has the dialogue 'my god, my god' followed by the slow raising of eyes to the heavens as the characters eventually grasp the import of the remark.

If you want to get over all the pain of reading Russian novels in one go, and avoid the tedium of learning of the human condition, then this is precisely the film for you.

'Count Vronsky, and I, love one another' Anna says helpfully at one stage - we'd never have suspected it otherwise.

I hope never again to wish so earnestly for somebody to be run over by a train as soon as possible.

Not brilliant, and overlong, but a film that's full of surprises.

Who'd imagine a Hollywood film that has a serious role for Gerard Manley Hopkins? That could poke fun at the chap who wants to twist Shakespeare to his peculiar fundamentalism? That could have authority figures asserting that, yes, it would be censorship to stop somebody expressing horror at the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? That has such an unlikeable, feral beast as its main character? That pokes fun, albeit gentle fun, at the peculiar brand of revenge known as 'justice' in Hollywood? That can portray opera as redeeming. One could go on.. that could have an adult objecting, coherently, to adolescent emoting - 'you are dealing with human beings, not characters in your personal opera' was, I thought, rather a good line.

The most annoying habit was repeatedly playing the theme from Tristan and Isolde, quite well, actually, in the foreground, but with people acting and talking over it. Maybe it was supposed to be some post-modernist message about ignoring beauty, or not paying attention, or... perhaps it was just a poor sound engineer.

It would be a much better film with an hour cut out of it, so I wouldn't recommend it. Maybe, though, if you've a very long flight it might be just the ticket to keep you engaged without needing to concentrate too much, with surprising little gems from time to time.

It's a good film for shots of Cape Town.

I like the bit where they use the 'Five Flies' restaurant as a stand-in for London, by using on of the Rikki black taxis.

The actors all clearly think they're terribly funny, so I have to assume that the overall intent is comedic, but the film is so badly acted and plotted that it's difficult to be certain.

If you don't enjoy shots of Cape Town, then it's best avoided.

They did use quite a number of different locations, so there is some variety. The poor old Rhodes Memorial scrubbed down badly, I fear.

There's something essentially pointless, I think, in making films about making films - 'Extras' was a lot less interesting than 'The Office'.

OK, so the underlying plot was that a Yank did the decent thing on the Nazi side while the Yanks won the war on the other side - nothing changes with the Hollywood view!

It was all the fault of the Pom who didn't act quickly enough.

So far, so normal.

What were they playing at, though, putting Tom Cruise into a film while they employed some real actors? He's wooden enough in a dummy show, but it's quite painful seeing him alongside some genuinely excellent actors - what were they doing in a film like this, by the way??

There were some bad actors - the chap playing Hitler would have been out-acted if replaced by Miss Marple, but even he was head and shoulders above Tom. Cruise isn't just a bad actor, he's a table.

This is well produced, slick, even, as a film. The acting is good and it's realistic.

It is a bit disturbing, as, of course, having massive numbers of people murdered as a result of a low-life liar deciding he wanted a war is disturbing.

It is, though, also comforting. It makes it clear that no matter how technically advanced they become, the US will continue to lose all its wars. When you have such amazingly and deeply stupid people, with all the cultural nuances of a nematode, as part of an organisation that's been honed to idiocy over years, they clearly aren't going to do very well, even against people armed with spears.

So it's largely an anthropological study that may surprise you. How do people who are so thick manage to live to their teens, let along beyond them?

You can see why the whole country was so proud that they managed to kill four boy pirates the other day, any sort of victory is worth celebrating. If you were so accustomed to being not only the loser, but the a swaggering, primitive bully, then you have to take what little shreds of comfort you can.

The abuse of International Law and all standard human decency by these grunts was well documented, even if it didn't show the worst excesses, it did show the ubiquity of the culture of contempt for humanity.

'Mad Men' entertaining smugfest. Filmmakers convinced of their intrinsic moral superiority to people in the sixties. Viewers too, presumably. Slickly done eg derided single-mum is superwoman - even discovered exercise before it became fashionable. It'll be a retro cult comedy in 2040.

This is more a reflection of the first decade of the 21st Century than the Sixties. Yes, much of it is accurate, but the joke is the emphasis on what the filmmakers believe the poor people in he sixties didn't know they had got wrong.

It's funny to see how the stereotypes are so fixed in the filmmakers - and they think that they are pointing out sixties stereotypes.

There are none so blind as those that will not see, particularly if they are smug and self- righteous.

Well the acting is mainly poor to bad. The plot, though, is obvious, trite and boring. Yes, Yankland Uber Alles is the entire theme. You can see that the author thinks that it's clever, but it fails completely to be so.

They want to make the point that Yanks kill people in other countries whilst having normal lives at home. Fine, it is wicked, we know that, but do we really need to spend so much time having this simple point rubbed into the ground again, and again, and again?

Foreign johnnies are, of course, there simply to be that, foils for the Yanks. They are portrayed as having even simpler minds than those of the simpletons who are the star actors - one bases his entire judgment of people on whether they 'lie to him'.

I think that, mainly, we're supposed to be impressed by how advanced the war is - now there are even Yanks who speak Arabic. Wow. Two hours for that..!

I knew that 'Evening' was a girlie film, so I was expecting to be bored. A wicked tease on IMDb had said that it was a 'chick flick' but that your companion would survive.

Survive? Yes. I am still here, but when the two of us came out we were amazed to find that it had only lasted two hours - it seemed a much longer evening than that! I suppose that, for Yanks, it is supposed to be elevating or fascinating because it is about rich people living on the beach - well, next to the beach, in a house with a wide verandah and a lawn but no apparent lawnmower. If that sort of thing impresses you it might seem quite a short film.

There's a Monty Python film about a Knight who just won't die. He ends up a wriggling (why do Yanks add an third syllable to this word I wonder) torso in the road still shouting threats at his nemesis. This film is also about a sort of living dead. Vanessa Redgrave (inappropriate name for the grave dodger shown here) goes on and on dying whilst having inappropriate guilt. She's not worried about having been a wide-eyed, breathless bimbo, but imagines herself a murderess.

Obviously, being a girlie film, there's a chap who is supposed to be the Mr Darcy/Heathcliff character. I'm not a woofter, so I can't claim to be a good judge of such things, but the tedious wimp who is wheeled out for this role seems only to have the title of servant in his favour. He's a bloodless cypher.

As you might gather, the main characters aren't much cop, but the minor ones manage, amazingly to be much worse. There's a fellow whose only job is to react to the news that his girlfriend is preggers. Fair enough, but it isn't the role of Hamlet - why ham it up so badly? Forgetting that it was a girlie film, I thought he was going to be thrown out because any decent girl-friend would have told him that face-fungus didn't flatter him, but then I realised that she must have encouraged him to grow a 'beard' because he looked worse without it.

I kept awake by noticing which actors and actresses had their earlobes attached or free and noting interesting bits of scenery - if you're dragged along to it, see if you can spot the stuffed buffalo head, just the sort of thing you'd expect in a beach cottage.

Apart from the obligatory wedding, there is only one piece of action. You'd have thought that they'd have got it right. Sadly, though, the hit and run accident is carried out by a car that couldn't be there. When the accident is discovered the cast wander about shouting for a character that they can't know is nearby (but we do as the audience). If they don't have any clue that the person is within a couple of miles of the place, then why do they wander about aimlessly shouting for him? I suppose that the director's excuse is that it is supposed to be a half-remembered dream sequence...

Another scenery item that caught my attention was a copper bottomed saucepan. I didn't think that the technology to do this was developed until the fifties.

I've watched the DVD version and I think that most of the comments here are reasonably accurate. The acting and directing is old fashioned - which I don't mind, it took a while for film to move behind the proscenium arch and it isn't always an improvement when it does.

It is nice to see the paintings, not formally displayed, but in different contexts. A few modern films have done this so much better (the Girl with a Pearl Earing is a masterpiece, for example) showing scenes that explain the painting. Here it is sometimes ham-fisted - particularly the shot of the Cafe at night as if the stars actually looked like that in reality! I don't mind the old fashioned acting, but I do object to the contempt for detail. Having most of the cast speaking Yank, but poor Vincent calling himself 'van go' just jars horribly. Even speaking Yank they ought to have got him to practicing his own name - other members of the cast manage to pronounce 'van Gogh' well enough not to make one cringe.

There are some funny bits. The scene where the buyers simply want to buy what's popular, with no taste of their own is very amusing. Not because it was intended, but because it is clear that the cast, director and producer don't share or even understand the problem. They do see it as a matter of value by the yard determined by popular acclaim. The notion of artistic value itself is hardly considered in the film. The fights between van Gogh and Gaugin are childish squabbles, nothing to do with art. Theo, who is supposed to understand Vincent, offers no critical response at all, only a patronising 'carry on dear, they're all good' approach.

So, yes, it has nice pictures and, if you aren't irritated by the dreadful accent and mispronunciation, the story jogs along in a straight linear style. It holds up a mirror to contemporary Yank 'taste' and understanding of art very well though - and it is interesting to see how little that has changed since the '50s.

This is undoubtedly the most tedious film that I've seen all year. It is the sort of film that gives 'art house' films a bad name.

The acting is wooden throughout though worse than usual as it appears as if all the actors have been heavily doped with some sedative the slow, deliberate way they ponderously shuffle about. The dialogue is wholly unconvincing but, sadly, only occasionally risibly so.

There were a couple of highlights. In one scene there's an interestingly designed basket of lemons hanging on the wall - I had time to commit to memory and it might work well as a wire basket. There are also numerous scenes of somebody playing billiards with himself (no, not pocket billiards!) on a real billiard table. You don't see many of those about these days.

They don't seem to have been clear about what language the film was supposed to be spoken in. It mainly has rhotic 'r's, but not always. It is beyond me why, when they were supposed to be French, they didn't just hire real French actors and actresses - even if they then tried to speak English it would have been more authentic sounding. It would have been better in the original language with sub-titles.

The garden looked just like you'd expect a hastily prepared film-set garden to look - quite unconvincing.

The beard continuity is all over the place. The lead robot grows several beards that all look different.

On top of all these failings, it is nastily, gooilly sickly- sentimental. Mawkishness drives almost every scene.

I wish somebody had told me to avoid this film. See it only if you want a kip.

Somebody must have bribed somebody a vast amount not to have this sent straight to DVD.

Amazingly the director also directed 'The Red Violin', a first rate film in almost every way - he must have been drinking himself into a coma every day since then or had a nasty accident that damaged his brain.

Do not be misled by the comments suggesting that this is artistic or worth watching!

This is a children's cartoon film, but a very peculiar one. Like another recent film it features a female, English-speaking girl with a nice bum - all the other characters are yanks.

It also, very strangely, considers, in some detail, the differences between reality and fiction as well as the matter of free will. It also makes reference to Descartes 'Cogito ergo sum'. I'm not really sure what these are doing in a children's film. Maybe, like the excellent 'Sophie's World' they really are trying to introduce philosophy to very young children.

If they are, then there are some peculiar ways of going about it. The villain has a plan to incinerate all plebvision viewers, particularly those with inclinations to watch a particular cartoon, by diverting a stream of volcanic lava through their plebvision sets. A brilliant scheme and a possible object lesson for the children. Sadly, though, the villain is thwarted and plebvision remains. Actually, plebvision is a constant theme throughout the film, which isn't very nice.

Technically the film is superb compared to the old days, but poor compared to something like Shrek - the character's lips don't fit the voices that well, for one thing, and the three eye'd frog is not very convincing.

The other odd thing about the film, that I meant to mention, is the name. The place is called 'gaya', but they all pronounce it 'guya'. If they wanted it to rhyme with Gaia, the goddess, then why on earth didn't they just call it 'guya'?

Is it that they didn't want to say 'gaya' properly because of the homosexual meaning of 'gay'? If so, that would be even odder, because the place seemed quite a gay place, in the standard meaning of the world and it would be good to introduce children to the happy and fun meaning of the word.

I enjoyed the film very much! There were lots, as you say, of anachronisms 'shag', for example, meaning 'to copulate' originates from 1788, nearly a hundred years later. They mispronounce both 'flaccid' and 'trait' - common enough errors, both, but they really shouldn't occur in a film of this nature.

Even the conceit of the film was something of an anachronism - why on earth should the Earl of Rochester give a fart whether people like him - particularly those with modern sensibilities? I thought him an amusing and engaging figure - pity about his deathbed infection with religion, but his brain was addled with tertiary syphilis, so you can hardly blame him. I thought him remarkably un-debauched, actually, a trifle over-indulgent, certainly, but not debauched in any sensible meaning of the word - at least that's my view! John Malkovich is considerably less irritating than usual - probably because he is trying to speak English (he doesn't do too badly, though he makes some errors that no Native speaker would and that ought to have been corrected by the producer).

The lighting is nicely atmospheric and the sets pleasantly sub-fusc. There are some witty exchanges and enjoyable visual effects. It must have taken them ages to set up the scene where the spaniel shits behind the King's back.

I thought his wife was portrayed as a bit slow - surely she wouldn't have been so thick as not to have understood his point about the monkey.

I liked his servant - though I fear that he took more of his character from Baldrick in 'Black Adder' than from any historical Alcock.

I think that the film would be improved if the spoken introduction and epilogue were removed - as I say, I think that the view is anachronistic and the arch post-modernist attempt to have us see the film as an auto-biography is silly, vain and fails.

This is a most enjoyable re-hash of the '1984'. One of my long time heroes, good old Guy Fawkes gets a fitting memorial - though, as a point of accuracy, he wasn't hanged, he was hanged, drawn and quartered.

The film does have some other problems with accuracy. The descent into fascism, seen in the UK, has been a major part of Phony Tony's control-freakery and the New 'error of judgement' Labour puritanism - the film, at one stage, appears to suggest that such fascism might arise out of a Conservative government, the proof is, of course, in the pudding - ID Cards, trying to get rid of trial by jury, abolishing constitutional checks, running the government with a group of low-life cronies rather than parliament etc. etc.. Still, they probably couldn't have got the funding if they'd made the truth plain!

The film echoes some scenes from Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' very well - but the music is, of course, much better. The 1812 finale is quite magnificent, a scene of great delight, the sooner life follows art in that regard the better!

It is a nicely stylistic film, also literate in its references - if a bit self-consciously so, in a sort of sixth-formish manner.

It knocks the pants of the portrayal of Capote as a piece of entertainment. Also, unlike Capote, you can hear every word, which makes a film so much less self-indulgent.

One of the humorous vignettes was Stephen Fry admitting that, well, yes, he might be a bit of a pansy if you put it that way - beautifully done!

It should be required viewing for anybody who hasn't seen the picture of the way in which New 'error of judgement' Labour has screwed the country.

Oh, yes, and the bits about dealing harshly with the ex-colonies is very funny.

This is an entertaining film that is only, it seems, to be seen on DVD. It was made in 2004, but I don't recall it being on the circuit. The acting is good and it has such a well created period feel that I thought that it was an old film.

It relied rather too much on plebvision cuttings from the period to create that feeling to be judged an excellent film, but it was so much better than the than the recent goatherd film or the one about the sex change that it is worth mentioning. Besides, I suspect that, as a critique of plebvision watchers it rather succeeded.

If people were a little puzzled as to why Arabs should have wanted to attack Yankland with aeroplanes(and only the very thick and ignorant can be so puzzled) then this is a film that usefully explains why Yanks with any sort of imagination should be keen to destroy the place too.

It is a rather sad film. Sad that only one depressive, low-lifer should have hit on the idea that Tricky dickey dead would have made for a nicer world than him alive (and remember that Yank presidents have consistently got worse since Tricky - a quite remarkable achievement considering his extremely low standards, one that has indeed required limbo dancers of depravity). Sad too that the poor bugger fails - but then, I suppose that any competent person would move countries long before being tempted to such lengths.

I'd recommend the film, though. It is pleasantly amusing and manages an amazingly realistic picture of the Land of the 'free' and the 'brave' - and it is a picture that hasn't changed much since the '60s. One of the nicer lines is 'Slavery never really ended in this country. It just gave it another name. Employee.' - I suppose that might lead some to read it as a Pinko film.

Anybody who does enjoy this film would probably love 'Starship Troopers' - another film that understand the ethos of the place, but, in that case, had to be made by a foreigner.

As an elegant graffito had it, this film could be summed up by the line: 'Lee Harvey Oswald, where are you when your country needs you?'.

This was a most excellent Ozzie film that I watched this evening. A delightful comedy. It wasn't that kind to Ozzies, but it was very funny. It was also quite strange in its way, but it was kind enough to give strong hints as to its plot development methods in one of the sub-plots.

I hadn't understood what people saw in line-dancing, but I think that I now have an inkling. It was also interesting to see how the yankish idiom appeals to the incoherent everywhere - the film exploited this point to excellent effect if a trifle cruelly, if you have any empathy with the incoherent.

It is so good to see the occasional well-made and clever film that turns up. I suppose that their explanation of how the plot was devised might be seen by some as a post-modernist infestation, but I felt that it was a) in good fun and, at worst, b) a good satire of post-modernist triviality taking itself so seriously as to think it is clever.

I'm not quite clear why it was showing at the downstairs cinema. There was a little French in it, with sub-titles, but surely not enough to class it as an 'art' film. Have Ster-Kinekor simply decided that Yankish films go upstairs and intelligent ones downstairs? It seems rather sad for the masses who go only to upstairs films to be missing this friendly and good-humoured comedy.

It is, I suppose, a little bit of a black comedy, in places, plenty of dismembered limbs, decapitated corpses and crushed dogs. All these are, however, in the best possible taste.

It seems strangely short of stock Oz stereotypes. Very little beer is drunk, the macho fellow doesn't do particularly well and the poofdahs generally have a nice time of it.

What was the reference to the Frenchman on the beach with the big knife? I thought of Albert Camus' 'The Outsider' (or 'The Stranger') which starts that way. A comment here suggests that it was a particularly Australian reference.