Reviews

A new genre is gaining momentum in international cinema, a genre I would be tempted to call "incomprehensible". In this movie we meet in effect only one character, a youngish trilingual woman with at least three names (let's call her Katja), who for unclear reasons is spending some time in a Swiss chalet. Most of Katja's time is spent fiddling with all sorts of hi-tech gadgets (smart phones, microphones, tablets, displays.....) and answering calls from various individuals all speaking in riddles and issuing not-so-thinly veiled threats. Her skills with plugs, cables, androids etc. Are truly amazing. Although she keeps reminding her interlocutors that she is fully retired from her chosen profession (espionage?), they all sound skeptical and they keep harassing her.

Now and again some other characters turn up, in what one might call cameo appearances, but since most of the scenes are in pitch darkness, their role is never clearly defined. An occasionally mentioned connection to the 2008 American presidential election has left me floored.

All in all, a complete waste of about 90 minutes of valuable time. The movie however does have one redeeming feature: the Swiss mountainscape is truly stunning.

If this ghastly apology for a movie had been made during Dante's lifetime, my guess is that he would have sentenced one of the worst category of sinners to watch it perpetually, 24/7, for all eternity.

This is a movie without a plot, without any credible characters, created by people obsessed with sex and women's good looks rather than intelligence or professional skills. It puts the female emancipation clock back by a hundred years. I am seriously puzzled how the producer, the director and the production company could have devoted so much time and resources to this kind of dog. I shall always regret having wasted 90 minutes of my life watching it.

If this is a comedy, then I must have been using the wrong dictionaries all this time. I found the movie deeply depressing, as the story of a masochistic character who does all in her power to make her place in society as awkward as she possibly can. The anti-heroine, "Mrs" Ferguson, has a negative personality, without one spark of joy or interest in her fellow humans. Her behavior is selfish, she has no desire to help others, not even her close relatives including her four-year-old daughter. All that happens to her is someone else's fault, she has no empathy towards other people's misfortunes. In the movie, we also get an insight into the American prison system and its bleak features. At the end of this mercifully short picture I felt rather despondent.

My vocabulary is too limited to allow for a full description of this dog of a movie. I just opine that one of the worst tortures in Hell would be being forced to watch it ten times a day for all eternity. Pity imdb does not allow negative numbers.....

Watching paint dry would be an understatement for this tedious low-budget apology for a movie, set against the dreary North American cityscape, without a credible storyline or denouement. The only worthwhile element was the Martin Amis interview, in which he declares that happiness cannot produce good writing. The script writers, producers and director for this movie must be very happy people.

I could not understand this short film, the ending makes no sense. Can some charitable soul try to explain it to me?

It would be difficult to imagine a worse rendition of one of the defining moments of the 20th century. This movie is a real dog: the plot is clumsy and at times incomprehensible, the situations are mostly implausible, the cast act, talk and behave like English people, not like Soviet citizens of that era. The dialogs are atrocious and the continuous, gratuitous use of gutter language becomes an irritant. One can only hope that a talented director will shoot a remake in the not-too-distant future. This movie is a total disappointment.

This movie tries to address some of the issues regularly raised in the course of a routine police investigation into a murder mystery: for example, the creation of a media circus; public frenzy around the case, especially when the disappearance of a nubile young woman is concerned; the tendency to find a scapegoat, even when the evidence is scanty; etc. However, it does it in a clumsy way, and the outcome could only be politely described as a dog's breakfast. Two or three other spectators I asked while exiting also admitted they hadn't a clue. Frankly, not worth getting out of bed for.

After watching this movie, I asked myself why I had enjoyed it, in spite of its cheesiness, in-your-face feel-good-ness and insouciance about detail. Then the penny dropped: it had a straight, comprehensible, linear story line, there were no puzzling flashbacks, the characters were clearly delineated...and, what's more, no foul language, no nudity, no drug-taking, none of the trendy, often forced ingredients of contemporary cinema!

This movie is far from perfect, but it is a breath of fresh air, even if the attempted canonization of Kelly doesn't quite come off as intended by its creators. And, mercifully, it's less than two hours long!

What stands out in this tedious apology for a movie is the succession of clichés inherited from the so-called belle époque, a delight for pseudo-intellectual snobs. To name just a few: the cunning, suave concierge who scores with ALL the wealthy widows who visit his hotel; the upright lawyer who reads out a will to the assembled family (do they really exist?); the 'glamorous', sophisticated middle-European clientèle. Plus a chase through the skiing slopes, following a daring escape from a prison. In addition to the above, we now have some more recent obligatory clichés: foul language, same-sex relationships (preferably involving bisexual partners); etc. etc. There is virtually nothing to recommend this dog. What a colossal waste of talent, time and money.

Apart from some picturesque scenery and aesthetically pleasing segments, this movie has virtually nothing to offer. It is insufferably lengthy (two-and-a-half hours!), nothing of any significance happens, the main character, an anti-hero improbably named "Jep" (short for what? such a name does not exist in Italian) wanders around in a daze, looking like a not particularly intelligent zombie. The whole exercise is redolent of Fellini at his worst (superficial characters, boring scenes in glitzy environments dressed up as 'daring', pseudo-philosophical dialog without any worthwhile content). Andersen's story about a naked emperor comes to mind...It's puzzling to me how such a movie could impress so many critics, prize-awarding juries etc....

After the first genuinely funny movies (Sleeper, Everything you wanted to know about sex), Director Allen has become a predictable, unfailing bore. His movies have become almost entirely formulaic (with neurotic, self-absorbed characters behaving like bats out of hell), and this one has also the dubious distinction of consisting of a series of flashbacks which make it almost incomprehensible. Extolling the virtues of some members of the cast is puzzling, remembering that each scene has to be filmed 100 times, i.e. there must be at least one out of one hundred in which the actor/actress 'gets it right'. Most Oscars have been awarded to ostensibly glamorous, drop-dead stunning pictures which in fact turn out to be fairly mediocre. This one, I regret to say, is no exception.

We went as a group, which included two retired academics (one a Professor), an intellectual woman with several publications to her name, and a medical doctor who is also an academic. None of us could make head or tail of this excruciatingly tedious, too-clever-by-half, pointlessly repetitious dog of a movie. The story is set during the 'Cold War', at a time when paranoia and reciprocal distrust was rampant on both sides of the 'Iron Curtain', for unclear reasons (a paradox which is admirably deconstructed in Hobsbawm's 'Age of Extremes'). It revolves around the squalid world of spies and double agents, whose boring lives are occasionally livened by a murder, or attempted murder, or two. In order to create an exotic background, the scene keeps rotating between London, Budapest and Istanbul which, at the time, may have sounded like destinations on other planets, but are now easily reached in a couple of hours on low-budget flights from Western Europe, and therefore fail to impress. The movie's 'hero' is apparently a secret agent called Smiley, who acts and behaves like a catatonic zombie throughout the over- two-hour-long tedium. It transpires that his wife has been unfaithful to him, yet it would be really surprising if she had stuck to such an unappealing, lifeless individual for more than a couple of years. According to reliable sources, there had been a previous incarnation of Smiley, played by Alec Guinness, who was apparently even more of a zombie. The movie is also marred by a series of flashbacks of unclear significance, some of which are repeated ad nauseam, with the result that the little comprehension one might have achieved is dissipated in the general confusion. Why it should be regarded as brilliant to make cryptic movies which perhaps one percent of cinema goers, if that, may appreciate, remains a mystery. Three cheers for Snow-white and the Seven Dwarfs! (the Disney version, of course).

How strange, that in the year 2010 crime should still be explained in terms of ancient superstitions developed in a pre-scientific age, rather than in terms of recent advances in psychiatry, sociology etc. Graham Greene's obsession with 'sin', rather than with the social and psychological aspects of crime, is strongly reflected in this violent, would-be metaphysical hotchpotch based on an unlikely chain of gruesome events triggered off by the casual taking of a photograph on Brighton Pier. Among the many inconsistencies, we could mention the seemingly squalid living quarters of big-time criminals who, one might expect, would be more likely to live off the proceeds of their activities in more luxurious surroundings (although, it should be pointed out, the nature of those activities is not made clear in the course of the movie). An altogether disappointing experience, mercifully less than two hours long, in Australia at least.

This movie is not recommended to people who have just had a meal, as half of it will be spent watching the characters preparing, serving and/or eating vast quantities of fatty-looking, über-rich products of haute cuisine (not to mention the drinks). The pivotal event in the plot seems to be an infatuation, by a middle-aged, bored (and, alas, boring) wife from the Milanese 'high society' for a rather dour, sexually gauche local chef, who does not appear to possess any remarkable personal qualities, so it is puzzling that he should become such a formidable rival for her husband. All that follows could be described as a chain reaction of events, with unpredictable results. So far, so ho-hum, as there have been so many depictions of adulterous wives-cum-femmes-fatales in literature (Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Lady Chatterley...the list is long). Unfortunately, the whole movie is a succession of cliché-ridden situations and episodes, plus obscene displays of wealth within a family whose patriarch had become rich from marketing textile products, plus vacuous ritual gatherings of like-minded fellow traders and their kith and kin. (Luckily for us viewers, there is no high-society ball). Even the now compulsory homo-erotic relationship is included, in the shape of a young woman who dumps her boyfriend for her female peer Angharad (whose name gets mis-spelt in the subtitles), although it is not clear to me why homo-eroticism should arouse so much admiration among the trendies. The purpose of the movie seems to be a continuous attempt to impress, i.e. épater les bourgeois. While watching it, I couldn't help feeling that it was a hybrid, containing elements from previous movies by other directors (such as, for example, La dolce vita, or The Leopard) and some of the more upmarket American soapies (say, The Bold and the Beautiful). Trouble is, The Bold and the Beautiful is more entertaining... One would need an enormous dose of charity to say anything positive about this dog.

This is one of those rare opportunities one has, to compare and contrast a novel (Schlink's 'Der Vorleser') with its movie, both being recent and both being controversial. All in all, my take would be that the movie comes out on top. It is more nuanced than the novel, the characters are better delineated, it grips the viewer without the subtle, insidious effect the novel seems to have had on most of its critics (including top-notch ones!). The bottom line, in the novel at least, is that the monstrous behavior of former SS officers is buried in an avalanche of schmaltz, romantic delusions, euphemisms... Hanna's total lack of humanity is at least partly excused on the grounds of her illiteracy: a hard one to swallow, also because it is not at all clear how she could have joined the SS AND a tram company without even being able to write her own name; genocide becomes hidden in childish arguments (Hanna 'gladdens' the last days of many perfectly healthy, innocent young women before sending them to the gas chamber!); in the discussion about the church fire (caused by that nasty Allied air force!), much judicial quibbling is devoted to establishing who had written a report on the fire, and no-one asks the obvious question 'Why were those innocent women locked up in a church against their will?'; the death march (not shown in the movie) is made to sound, in the novel, almost like a pleasant walk before a picnic. In regard to the above issues, the movie performs rather better than the novel, due perhaps to input from non-authorial sources. Therefore, in my view, the movie deserves, perhaps, six out of ten.

This movie shares, with Casablanca and The Third Man, the dubious distinction of being one of the most overrated in the history of cinema. It is also not entirely clear why the Orson Welles myth should persist until today. Kane's existential progress is presented superficially, without a coherent framework. His achievements and failures are portrayed choppily, more in the form of sound bites than analytically. Technically, the movie seems rather amateurish: Welles hectors rather than explains; the diction and delivery of most characters sounds stilted and unnatural; it is often difficult to find out who is talking, as most of the male voices sound the same and the characters turn their backs to the audience, and/or hide under wide-brimmed hats. One could go on. The fortuitous discovery of a goldmine on the property of a lower middle class housewife stretches credibility. Trying to discover the meaning of one word (the film's rather trivial leitmotiv) seems hardly worth the time and effort involved. An altogether forgettable experience.

What stands out in my mind after watching The Queen is its (unintended?) comicality. Behind a glitzy facade, we are confronted with the empty, squalid lives of people with 'more money than sense', as the saying goes, yet desperately attached, limpet-like, to their privileges and wealth. Mercifully deprived of all real power, the head of an institution well past its use-by date continues to behave as if the destinies of the nation depended on her decision-making skills. But the only issues she is allowed to determine are trivial and merely symbolic, as, for example, whether a flag should be flown at half-mast or not, in memory of a youngish, mediocre, promiscuous ex-daughter-in-law who had squandered most of her copious time consorting with wealthy and not-so-wealthy men instead of spending quality time with her teenage sons. The youngish PM, supposedly the leader of a socialist political party, keeps up the fiction, behaving sycophantically towards the 'head of state' and propping up a system which only benefits those who are already obscenely wealthy. All of this is shown against a background of inexplicable public grief, yet another example of the old dictum 'monarchs will behave like monarchs only as long as their subjects continue to behave like subjects'. Only five years down the track, there occurred an event which clearly demonstrated how values are completely reversed in our society: the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. On that occasion, a truly humane monarch could have refused to sign the order-in-council which authorized the invasion; but didn't. And millions of citizens could have filled the streets of London to protest; but didn't. To be sure, there were demonstrations against the intervention, but they were much, much smaller than those mourning the dead 'princess'. And so the show goes on, staged by the lackeys of the obscenely wealthy and applauded by the gullible millions. Just one more question: if Elizabeth Windsor is genuinely averse to stag hunting, why does she permit it on her own multi-thousand-acre estate? All in all, I regard this as an excellent movie, although it is not entirely clear to me whether its perceptive portrayal of royal squalor was intended.

This movie is a concentrate of all the most naive myths held by the large number of people who are impressed with, and indeed have a kind of veneration for, the squalid life-style, disguised as glamor, of the wealthy classes, in particular of the idle aristocracy who is still allowed to pullulate in a monarchical state, taking advantage of their many privileges and at the same time behaving like alley cats. The story line of 'Brideshead revisited' is well known: this version adds some gratuitous details such as the now compulsory insertion of homosexual individuals and relationships (an insertion which is not evident in Waugh's original story, and is therefore arbitrary), and the (also compulsory) interlude in a foreign holiday resort, designed to highlight the eccentricity of the British upper classes; and makes heavy weather of the religious hang-ups of its characters (which include the fanciful notion that a whole lifetime of 'sin' can be wiped out by a last-minute deathbed absolution). That so many people should find interesting this kind of platitudinous treatment of the private lives of egocentric, profoundly selfish so-called aristocrats seems to me a sad reflection on public taste, and on the power of media-generated propaganda to create self-perpetuating myths. An altogether disappointing work by an undoubtedly skillful director. Oh, I almost forgot: there simply HAD to be some scenes depicting the life of Riley supposedly enjoyed by Oxford University students...

This is a sad movie about the gradual disintegration of a middle class marriage which involves some cute role-reversal elements: Agnes, the wife, holds a reasonably responsible, well-paid position in a medical research institute (not at the top, of course, as we may assume there is a glass ceiling). Her husband, a writer of crime fiction, stays at home, looks after their teenage daughter and does the housework (well, most of it anyway). As mutual sexual attraction inevitably decreases, each of the two spouses seeks alternative partners, more as a form of escapism than a search for deeper, lasting commitments. Credible thus far, the plot becomes silly when Agnes commits adultery, apparently (but not quite clearly) 'doggie-style', with a totally unknown man whom she has never met before and whom she does not even see on that first occasion (he will turn out to be fatter and uglier than her husband, and it remains a mystery how he could have aroused her so skilfully). Having neglected her professional duties in the process, Agnes finds herself at an existential crossroads and we, the viewers, are left with a quandary as to which course of action might be best for her and her family.

Call me obtuse, but I will never understand the fascination so many people experience when confronted with the lifestyle and behavior of the so-called nobility, one of the worst species of parasite on our blighted planet. This movie concerns, by and large, the antics of a 'duke', equipped with more money than sense, whose main interests in life seem to be young women (preferably naked in bed) and dogs. Predictably, his young, naive and perhaps not terribly bright wife is the victim of the duke's callous, capricious behavior, and, in spite of some attempts to assert her trodden-upon dignity, she is finally discomfited in the end: a bit like Winston Smith in the last chapter of Orwell's '1984'. The playwright and the director have missed a unique opportunity to highlight the obscene contrast between the majority of the British population and their idle, parasitical and cruel 'aristocracy'. Worse still, peasants and the urban working class are occasionally shown while wildly cheering 'progressive' candidates to a general election when these pussyfoot around, promising some vaguely-worded 'reforms'. How the undeserving class known as aristocracy could be (and alas, still can be) respected and generally admired, will always remain a complete mystery to me.

It seems that in the current decade a movie worth its salt must have three basic trendy ingredients: coarse language galore, drug- taking and the now universally obligatory gay couple (with one of the partners preferably married to a woman and/or bisexual). These criteria are admirably fulfilled in 'Death at a funeral', and the result is one ongoing 90-minute long yawn, entirely predictable situations and tired gags. Oh, for the innocence and charm of the romantic Hollywood comedies back in the 50s! I suspect that, sooner or later, the great unwashed public will tire of movies reflecting fringe interests and creating improbable, pseudo-titillating sketches. Good taste in movies appears to be at an all-time low at the moment.

I always find it difficult to take crime stories seriously, and 'Five little pigs' is no exception. It seems strange that viewers never seem to address the inherent absurdity of a plot such as this one, which involves the coming-together of disparate characters so long after a crime; their apparent willingness, and ability, to describe all they did on that day in minute detail so many years later; and the supernatural perceptiveness of a totally unbelievable foreign detective who is implausibly allowed to detain all 'suspects', to give them uncomplimentary nicknames and, alas predictably, comes up with a clever-dick solution to the mystery and an expose of the murderer's technique and her motives. As other viewers have noticed, extraneous elements have been added, for example the inclusion of a homosexual character (now seemingly compulsory in all filmic and theatrical productions). The acting is, incidentally, quite atrocious. There is to my mind one redeeming factor in this version of 'Five little pigs', namely the admission that the police and the judiciary occasionally get it wrong (in this case, an innocent person is hanged). But I find it quite improbable that the responsible authorities, whether police or judiciary, would allow a private stickybeak from a non- English speaking background to conduct extensive inquiries and interrogations in the kind of setting portrayed in "Five little pigs' (incidentally, am I the only viewer who finds Poirot's English, with the occasional 'merci' and 'madame' thrown in, excruciatingly irritating?). So, to sum it all up, those five little pigs seem to by flying all over the place...