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How to Lose Friends and Alienate People 7/10, fine.
The Cider House Rules 5/10 BLLEAAUUAAUUAARRRRRRRGGEH! is the sound of being sick and my way of illustrating much you might vomit during and after watching The Cider House Rules - if you weren't lucky enough to sleep and snore through the whole movie. It is offensively sentimental and romantic, and manipulative too. The story concerns orphans, abortions, apples, a war, King Kong and other old things like that which used to happen but probably don't anymore. Not in themselves boring but when combined and made into a shitty bullshit story by these particular actors, writers and crew, very very boring indeed. Croaky Michael Caine's accent is all over the place, sounding like a cross between Kermit the Frog and James Stewart and the fact that he won Best Supporting in 1999 (over Tom Cruise and Jude Law!) is a joke. The good things about it are: the scenery, and Charlize Theron, look nice. The set decoration's also nice. Paul Rudd's in it. Unless I've been woefully obtuse and managed to misunderstand the entire last third of this film, it feels like the film is inviting us to regret the imminent death of a quite awful man (Delroy Lindo, whose self-professed "business" is the cutting of other apple-pickers with his knife) who raped his own daughter! Was that acceptable in the olden days? Sorry, what? Did he think it's fine to do that because it wasn't one of the acutal rules like "don't smoke in bed" and "don't go on the roof to eat your lunch"? Isn't "don't make your own daughter pregnant by raping her" one of those unwritten Cider House Rules that everyone knows already and it sort of goes without saying? Fuck you Delroy, you're the bad guy and everyone who isn't glad you're nearly dead is as bad as you are.
THX 1138 6/10 was too abstract, sparse and vague for me to get much enjoyment from. It starts off being interesting and ends up with the white-suited characters wandering around completely white sets. It reminded me of that bit in Willy Wonka where the boy gets sent via television. Things do get a bit more interesting towards the end (there's motorbikes and a modified Lola T70) but still, it's not a very good way to spend the future.
Where the Wild Things Are 9/10.
The Killer Inside Me 7/10 Who's the vilest, most heinous, inhumane movie villain you can think of? Chances are s/he's several rungs below this film's protagonist, Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), on the ladder. I don't often have to deliberately and determinedly look at a the opposite side of the screen to where the action is happening in a scene. It's the adult equivalent of peeking through one's fingers or hiding under the seat. The Killer Inside Me is a very talky and convoluted film noir based on a notorious crime novel by Jim Thompson - how talky this film is, especially in its fat middle, is it's biggest downfall. The thick Texas accents everybody speaks with sound very nice and authentic but it makes what they're saying hard to understand and consequently the twisty-turny plot is too easy to lose track of. This film illustrates perfectly the reason I watch with subtitles at home so people interested in seeing this film but not used to hearing Lone Star State drawlings should probably do likewise. Casey's intensity and his strange high-pitched voice make him ideal for playing this sort of character. There's some good action, extremely black humour and an ending that I can only describe as being profoundly troubling.
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