Judgements

The Countess arrived more or less unheralded in our house, and on a quiet evening after a hard day, her appeal was great. I mean, “She sacrificed all for love… and sacrificed others for beauty. A 17th century Hungarian countess embarks on a murderous undertaking, with the belief that bathing in the blood of virgins [...]

The Brothers Bloom concerns two of the greatest con artists in the world and their various cons, and it is engaging and funny and, in the end, quite suspenseful. It also plays with time in ways that intrigue. Set in the now, it nevertheless features a telegram being read, stop, and replied to, stop. I [...]

I wasn’t sure whether to blog Quantum of Solace, which I saw on Wednesday night, but late-breaking news of a James Blog-a-Thon tipped the scales, needy-blogger that I am. QoS is a mess of a movie, with an even more meaningless than usual title, but WTF. I’m no Bondie (or whatever they call themselves) but [...]

Do actors make good directors? I’m blowed if I know. Some can certainly do it. So when I was looking up Tom McCarthy, the director of The Visitor, I was pleasantly surprised to see he had lots of acting credits, including several for The Wire. He was also in Syriana. And he wrote and directed [...]

Stop Loss is a film about the war in Iraq and what it does to the young men who serve. War is hell. So is this film. How it gets the ratings it does is beyond me. IMDB says “Mark Richard estimated that there were no less than 65 drafts of the script.” Sixty five, [...]

Finally got to see No Country for Old Men over the weekend, and boy was it worth it. I don’t know that I can remember a film as full of suspense. I heard an interview with the sound designer, I think it was, who explained how the Coens had insisted on almost no music and [...]

A book of essays is not ideal for a period of enforced idleness. There’s just too much time to zip through them, enjoying the moment but failing to savour the full pleasure of a really well constructed piece. Of course, I promise myself I’ll return, and maybe I will. But a honking big novel is [...]

Ah, the glamour of life in the Eternal City. A friend had tickets for a screening that was part of the Rome Festival of Cinema, for 10.30 on a Saturday night. Of course one didn’t ask “what for?”. My aversion to horror movies being well known, it wouldn’t have been one of them. But had [...]

I had read about Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man, which weaves his own footage with that of the dead bear watcher, although I never really made the effort to seek it out. But when it showed up on a DVD evening at a friend’s house, I wasn’t going to object. It is actually a beautifully [...]

Cate Blachett surely has to be in the running for an Oscar, but as Actor or Actress? Her Jude Quinn (without a parka!) in I’m not there is astonishing, Bob Dylan somehow brought to life. She doesn’t impersonate Dylan, but she somehow recreates him, which is fitting as this wonderful, kaleidoscopic film recreates and weaves [...]