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Factotum 8/10 stars Matt Dillon as the eponymous man of many jobs. He's a slacker of a type we don't see very often: thoughtful, weary, slow-moving, deep-thinking. He'll eventually be distinguished, assuming he lives long enough. He goes around getting menial job after menial job, often getting fired on the very same day that he was hired. It's funny and touching and entirely true to the spirit of the book it was based on, by Charles Bukowski.
Stay 7/10 is an ambitious and odd mystery/thriller starring Ewan McGregor and (yes!) Ryan Gosling. It's twisty-turny and intriguing, playing with and unsettling previously rock-solid notions of identity and cognitive reality, at its best reminiscent of a waking ketamine nightmare, but doesn't end up making a lot of sense. McGregor as an American never genuinely convinces (though his yellow trousers are excellent) whereas Gosling is excellent at the kind of character he plays here - menacing, enigmatic, dynamic - relentlessly pacing the line between charismatic and insane.
Breakfast at Tiffany's 5/10 - everyone knows what this is. I didn't like it at all and I can see why people took offense at Mr Yunioshi. Holly reminded me of Phoebe out of friends, and is almost as irritating. And who the fuck cast George "Stiffboard" Peppard? We're supposed to believe that he's a writer - a Bohemian writer!? The least crazy "crazy" party (yeah why not leave ALL the lights on?) in the hisory of filmland is thrown. Nobody has realized it's the sixties now. Bloody hell. I always thought Tiffany's was a diner or something. Turns out it's a massive Jewellery store. They don't even have breakfast there. Wait, how could they? It makes no sense. Maybe it's a metaphor.
Poltergeist 9/10 is more like it! At least there's some special effects and stunts in this one. It's said in the dialogue that the mother, Diane, is 31 and the daughter, Dana, is sixteen. How does that work? She started a family when she was fifteen? If she's a stepdaughter that's never mentioned. Anyway Dana's already at it, teasing the builders and knowing about the Holiday Inn (expert misdirection by Dana saves her from what could have been a nasty lecture on promiscuity and/or contraception). The dog's name is E-Buzz! What?! Whose idea was that!? There's lots of glib humour in this that I really like and, though it doesn't have the stark raw horror of The Exorcist or the grandiosity of The Omen, Poltergeist holds its own through that familiar Spielbergian domesticity and an abundance of giddy shocks and scares.
The Missouri Breaks 7/10 even though it was only slightly above average, reminded me how good Westerns can be and how much I like watching even mediocre ones. This one would be that were it not for it's two showboating stars (Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando - two very non-Western actors). Nicholson leads a gang of horse poachers and Brando is the 'regulator' hired to stop them. Nicholson plans and schemes, and slides into a prickly relationship with the rancher's daughter, Brando does grunting and mumbling instead of acting and Little Todd (poor Randy Quaid, always the tragic figure!) - gets drowned in a river.
Open Range 8/10 is another Western along more classic lines but also set in Montana: Kevin Costner (also directing) and Robert Duvall are proper cowboys: honest freegrazers who make the mistake of grazing their cows on grass that's too near to Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). The climactic gunfight is one of the biggest and best in Western (maybe even cinema!) history.
The Quiet American 8/10 is a very good adaptation of a Graham Greene novel starring Michael Caine and (ahem!) Brendan Fraser. It's set in French Indo-China/Vietnam in nineteen fifty something and there's a lot of war, reporting, espionage, old-fashioned politeness and simmering love rivalry going on.
Toy Story 8/10 was always one of my least-liked Pixar films. Andy the kid is a horrid little wretch. I want to throw ALL his toys into the sea then watch him cry. Sid the "bad" child has much more going for him. Woody is a reactionary and a coward and not very likeable or identifiable. I suppose it doesn't help that I don't like Tom Hanks or children at all. The humans look fucked up in this film. And the dog runs funny. The finale is pretty good. I saw a home-made clip on Youtube once that bleeped the "falling" out of Buzz saying "This isn't flying, this is falling with style" and omitted "with style", so it was like, "This isn't flying, this is f*cking!"
Shooting Dogs 9/10 tells the story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide from the point of view of an old missionary priest (John Hurt) and a young English teacher (Hugh Dancy), who are both British. Anyone who still thinks that humanity isn't doomed should see this film, Hotel Rwanda or either of the Shake Hands with the Devil adaptations.
The Girlfriend Experience 6/10. This film doesn't have a proper plot. It's "about" very rich people who pay a top-end escort for company and sex. It turns out that such people are all deeply unpleasant after all (QUELLE SURPRISE). She tries to have a "proper" (i.e. not paid for) relationship with a guy who's even more of a dickhead than her clients. Ho-hum!
Tenebrae 5/10: "One is made all the more aware of the director's [Dario Argento] inability to match visual flair with anything worth watching" (Philip Strick, MFB)
Dressed to Kill 6/10 is an unremarkable end to a sometimes great series: Universal's updated Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. It's a feeble story about printing plates being stolen from the Bank of England... and that's all I can remember about it.
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