I like this film which was a twist on the usual rom com fantasy and something of a role reversal for French movies nirmally focused on the pecadillios of the married man. Here the wife has the straying eye but when found out has to spend a night apart from her husband in a hotel opposite their apartment with a collection of former livers and a younger version of her husband. I can see why this high risk film might annoy the pants off so many reviewers but if you go with the glow it is a seeetly intoxicating story of love, desire, the roving eye of some wives and the ludicrous flights of fancy our imaginations can take us on when faced with the hard choice to stay or go.
Reviews
11 Reviews
Fear
(1996)
Ridiculous Reaganite melodrama saved by screen presence of Witherspoon snd Wahlberg.
23 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
16 year old 'daddy's girl' Reece Witherspoon lives in the shadow of her jealous father with his young trophy bride on an ultra high security compound set on a peninsula with swimming pool and 24 hour armed guards. Dad actually gives her a pendant that says Daddy's Girl so this is a film about incestuous jealousy first and class war between the high gated uber rich and homeless, white trash bums second.
At an edgy party attended by various obnoxious douchbags, microskirt-wearing Witherspoon meets handsome, tousle haired teenager Mark Wahlberg. They hit it off until Wahlberg, as insanely jealous as her father (and ready to take full possession from aging patriarch), hits her and her male friend for exchanging an innocent hug outside the school. Daddy sees Reece's black eye and forbids her from seeing Wahlberg. Well-connected dad gets police background checks on Wahlberg and, proving it is right to break the law when protecting your property) discovers he is an unwanted orphan from the wrong side of the tracks. Dad forbids Witherspoon from seeing Wahlberg but inevitably this has the opposite effect and penitent Wahlberg is soon frolicking in the family pool with daughter and trophy wife, much to dad's disgust. Worse, Wahlberg reveals his psycho side to dad by gloating about how he is turning both his wife and daughter on. Wahlberg takes Witherspoon to Carni land where he is able to get deep into second base on a rollercoaster.
This leads to denouement where Wahlberg reveals he is zombie apocalypse working class bent on snatching daughter (steals pendant and changes 'Daddy's Girl' to 'David's Girl' - yes really) but also class revenge with his ne'er do well junkie friends arriving in dirty old cars at secluded family home. They attack dad's fortress and kill armed guard after cutting off electricity and phone. Dad's real mistake is not having military grade automatic weapons to hand and failing to mine his garden. Fractured bourgeois family is now brought together in violent defence of stockaded homestead and brutal slaughter of devious, marauding rapist natives.
This is a slick Reaganite melodrama that will have your family baying for semi automatic rifles, police background checks and chastity belts.
At an edgy party attended by various obnoxious douchbags, microskirt-wearing Witherspoon meets handsome, tousle haired teenager Mark Wahlberg. They hit it off until Wahlberg, as insanely jealous as her father (and ready to take full possession from aging patriarch), hits her and her male friend for exchanging an innocent hug outside the school. Daddy sees Reece's black eye and forbids her from seeing Wahlberg. Well-connected dad gets police background checks on Wahlberg and, proving it is right to break the law when protecting your property) discovers he is an unwanted orphan from the wrong side of the tracks. Dad forbids Witherspoon from seeing Wahlberg but inevitably this has the opposite effect and penitent Wahlberg is soon frolicking in the family pool with daughter and trophy wife, much to dad's disgust. Worse, Wahlberg reveals his psycho side to dad by gloating about how he is turning both his wife and daughter on. Wahlberg takes Witherspoon to Carni land where he is able to get deep into second base on a rollercoaster.
This leads to denouement where Wahlberg reveals he is zombie apocalypse working class bent on snatching daughter (steals pendant and changes 'Daddy's Girl' to 'David's Girl' - yes really) but also class revenge with his ne'er do well junkie friends arriving in dirty old cars at secluded family home. They attack dad's fortress and kill armed guard after cutting off electricity and phone. Dad's real mistake is not having military grade automatic weapons to hand and failing to mine his garden. Fractured bourgeois family is now brought together in violent defence of stockaded homestead and brutal slaughter of devious, marauding rapist natives.
This is a slick Reaganite melodrama that will have your family baying for semi automatic rifles, police background checks and chastity belts.
The Mauritanian
(2021)
Ignore snippy reviews. This is an excellent film
5 April 2021
Excellent cast, story and direction. Whenever a film tries to tell a story about the torture and abuses that occured in the War in Terror they get smeared as 'worthy' even in 'liberal' papers like The Guardian. I feel sorry for any director or producertrying to tackle an important storyline this. The will pick holes in it because that story can't betold in our news programmes and needs to be denigrated and disparaged when dramatised. Judge for yourself.
Loro
(2018)
This complex, underrated film needs seeing multiple times
20 November 2020
Tony Servillo is outstanding in every film, but especially those by Sorrentino. In IL Divo he played Italian PM Andreotti as a hunched, Machiavellian vampire scuttling in the shadows. In Loro he plays Berlusconi as a shallow and brash, but tragic, aging lothario. Sorrentino's films and TV shows (The Great Beauty, The Young Pope, The New Pope etc ) are so rich, so complex and beautiful that they all need to be seen at least twice. They really grow in you with repeated viewing And all have absolutely cracking soundtracks. Sorrentino is Italy's greatest living director and unlike so many great directors he will take on politics in all its filthy reality
Void
(2013)
This powerful film deserves to be see more widely
15 July 2019
This is a powerful film, told with restraint and bolstered by strong, measured performances by an ensemble of fine actors. The toll the Lebanese Civil War has had on families, relationships , the everyday emotional life of those left behind is shown with compassion and respect in these intimate portraits of loss, grief and trauma. The effect of the short films is cumulative and I didn't see the last film coming where all these stories are shown to be closely connected.
What I like about these stories is that it shows the victims (dead and grieving) of the war not as spotless heroes or martyrs, but as flawed, but loved human beings. Those who are left behind are devastated in different ways by the uncertainty their loved one's disappearance makes on them. The quiet dignity of these people trying to get on with their lives not knowing what happened is heartbreaking and I wonder what kind of impact this film has had in Lebanon where tens of thousands have suffered this fate .
This film certainly deserves to be seen more widely. I find it very frustrating that the bulk of cinemas are showing so much wall-to-wall US dross (amongst the few decent films) while gems like this are usually hidden away from a wider public. I imagine on Netflix or IMDB one day we will just be able to access all these films and pay towards the creation of more great dramas like this.
Interestingly, four of the directors are women and it is co-written by a woman Diamand Bou Abboud. Alongside showing a more liberal or honest depiction of Arab culture than we are used to seeing on the big screen, these are stories which do not focus on the politics but the messy emotional afterlife the women go through but also the impact it has on the men who love them. This was handled with real understated skill in all of the films and weaved together skilfully at the end with images of real protestors who are still looking for answers about the fate of their loved ones from a dark chapter in Lebanon's recent history.
What I like about these stories is that it shows the victims (dead and grieving) of the war not as spotless heroes or martyrs, but as flawed, but loved human beings. Those who are left behind are devastated in different ways by the uncertainty their loved one's disappearance makes on them. The quiet dignity of these people trying to get on with their lives not knowing what happened is heartbreaking and I wonder what kind of impact this film has had in Lebanon where tens of thousands have suffered this fate .
This film certainly deserves to be seen more widely. I find it very frustrating that the bulk of cinemas are showing so much wall-to-wall US dross (amongst the few decent films) while gems like this are usually hidden away from a wider public. I imagine on Netflix or IMDB one day we will just be able to access all these films and pay towards the creation of more great dramas like this.
Interestingly, four of the directors are women and it is co-written by a woman Diamand Bou Abboud. Alongside showing a more liberal or honest depiction of Arab culture than we are used to seeing on the big screen, these are stories which do not focus on the politics but the messy emotional afterlife the women go through but also the impact it has on the men who love them. This was handled with real understated skill in all of the films and weaved together skilfully at the end with images of real protestors who are still looking for answers about the fate of their loved ones from a dark chapter in Lebanon's recent history.
Cardboard Gangsters
(2017)
A classic of the genre
23 September 2018
An excellent gangster film that pulls no punches including great perfotmaces by the leads. The film takes you into the sink estates of Dublin and I was hunting for subtitles for the first twenty minutes. But once you ear attunes the story is delivered with economy and flair. It has the grit and some of the flair of Pusher or Gomorrah, but the genre conventions mean there are few real surprises. So many terrible movies get hyped at the cinema, the director and writer of this tight, tense film deserve much more respect than they have been given in some of the user reviews here. Judge for yourself, but this film made a big impact on me.
Friend or Foe
(2003 TV Movie)
Panorama episode
3 September 2009
I have a copy (and it's good) but can find no copy of a BBC transmission date for Panorama where it seems it might have originally been slated for February 2003. Was it pulled at that point? I'm researching Panorama and find it odd that there appears to be no record of this being transmitted at all, certainly not under this title for the Panorama strand, yet there is a copy of the tape in the Panorama archive. I've just found by doing a long newspaper search that it was transmitted (but not as a Panorama) on BBC1 at 9pm on March 6th and got good reviews.
Perhaps Marcus would help clear up the mystery? It's an interesting investigation and I imagine would have given more cautious managers at Panorama something to worry about.
Perhaps the legal department intervened?
Perhaps Marcus would help clear up the mystery? It's an interesting investigation and I imagine would have given more cautious managers at Panorama something to worry about.
Perhaps the legal department intervened?
Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
(2004)
Absolute torture
7 December 2004
They could play this at Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners would be putty in the prison warders hands after 2 hours. Incredible that the likes of Jon Voigt should be associated with this steaming heap of excrement. Worst of all my 7 year old son didn't think it was bad so this film could actually make money and could be heading for your VCR (if you have kids) soon. They could show it at film school as how to throw away millions of dollars on a piece of rubbish that gets shown right around the world - I mean we saw it here in the United Arab Emirates. The premise had loads of possibilities - kids with superpowers -could have been funny, instead it was just unrelenting drivel. Not the actors/kids fault really - shoot the script writers and 'director'. Shoot them now!
Chelsea Walls
(2001)
well made, well acted, reflective and enjoyable
15 March 2004
I thought this film was extremely well crafted, with some outstanding performances - never overplayed or played for sensationalistic effect. Kris Kristoferson was a revelation - a very fine actor here, but everyone contributed to the realism and complexity of the stories. Loved the use of music coming through the walls - a good movie to watch late at night with no distractions and a glass of whisky.
If you're looking for a fast moving, action film you've come to the wrong place, but if you like convincing dialogue, good acting and an authentic sense of place you might enjoy this one. Ethan Hawke is clearly a talented director.
If you're looking for a fast moving, action film you've come to the wrong place, but if you like convincing dialogue, good acting and an authentic sense of place you might enjoy this one. Ethan Hawke is clearly a talented director.
Tell Your Friends