Reviews

'Get Carter' has Michael Caine at his best. He plays the vicious cockney gangster to perfection. I ended up sympathizing with his quest to expose the sordid and seedy goings on which led to the death of his brother in Newcastle.

The harshness, squalor, meanness and sheer indifference to fellow humanity of all the characters is perfectly put across by Hodges. And the ending is one of the greatest in cinema history.

'Waking Ned' is made very much in the style of old Ealing comedies and thematically is very similar to 'Whiskey Galore'. Like Mackendrick's film we are presented with an isolated and traditional community who depend on fishing and farming for their sustenance. The themes in the film are, firstly of 'little people' versus authority, namely the National Lottery whom they must deceive to fraudulently claim the dead villager's winnings.And secondly the kindred versus malevolent spirits, such as the unpleasant and reclusive Lizzy Quinn who would shop the community to get 10 per cent of the winnings and put them all in jail and out of sight.

The performances, particularly Ian Bannen, are good but somehow the film is too superficial to be a great film like 'Whiskey Galore'. It would be fair to describe 'Waking Ned' as an 'Ealing' film, in that it attempts to convey strongly the idea of 'community' which was typical of post-war Ealing movies i.e. 'Passport to Pimlico', 'Whiskey Galore' etc. However while those Ealing movies reflected many of the ideas and cultural perceptions of community in a Britain which had just gone through the Second World War, 'Waking Ned' projects a mythical Irish 'innocence'. In modern Ireland (or reality) a dead body would be taken to a coroner (as in most civilized countries) who would verify the cause of death, the body would not be left to the villagers or simply be recorded on the parish register. Perhaps, I should suspend my disbelief, but I feel that in doing so I am acquiescing to a patronising and rose tinted view of Ireland. It seems that while New Labour is desperately striving to cultivate an ideology of community in an uncertain Britain, Ireland becomes, in film at least, a backdrop for idealised fantasies about dying communities struggling to stay alive in a harsh and indifferent world.

An enjoyable, entertaining and highly stylised romp through London gang violence by Guy Ritchie. The film is brilliantly edited, however the use of third person narration and sequential edits is derivative of 'Trainspotting' (which is a much better film). The lighting is effectively sparse and effectively conveys the drabness and tawdriness of the characters and subject matter.

After watching this film I do not feel particularly bothered about ever seeing it again. It is certainly an overrated film and comes nowhere near classic British crime films like 'Get Carter' and 'The Long Good Friday'. The high ratings given to this film is because of it's current trendiness rather than it's overall cinematic quality. In Britain, the TV spin-off, not directed by Ritchie, 'Lock Stock..' was absolutely atrocious and was quite rightly panned by critics. Some of the other user comments saying that this film is better than American crime movies is palpable rubbish, this cannot compete with 'Goodfellas', 'The Godfather', 'The Sopranos', 'Reservoir Dogs' etc.

In conclusion, this is a good little film but not a great one and time will be the judge of that.

'The Luzhin Defence' is a good film with fine central performances, but too much of the novel and not enough of the filmmaker's craft shines through. It felt through most of the film that the characters just helped to push the narrative along. Marlene Gorris could perhaps have examined the psyche of Luzhin, rather than depicting him as a tortured innocent victim torn apart by the cruel motives of others.

Adapting literature for the screen is clearly a difficult task, especially a novel written in the early 20th century. This film does not go deeply enough into the relationship between Luzhin and Natalia. Natalia's rift with her mother comes across a churlish disagreement by the mother rather than a dramatic flashpoint in the film. I felt that I was put through Luzhin's torment and eventual tragic end, without being given the pleasure of having his unusual and complex personality unravelled. However, this was a moving and enjoyable film but certainly not a great one.

This film is not of the same class as 'The Big Lebowski' or 'Fargo'. However, the period recreations are excellent and the lead performances, especially John Turturro's. The link with Homer is interesting but the film tends to drone on and I don't feel caught up in the usual Coen brothers intrigue.

An excellent musical soundtrack carries the film along, but sometimes the displaced and surreal personal viewpoints that the Coen brothers project in their films fails to captivate in this instance. Hilarious KKK choreography, but the 'irony' of Everett being an astute social commentator as well as a convict has become an annoying cliche in Coen movies, where the most unlikely people talk in sociological language i.e. Lazar in 'Miller's Crossing'. I was slightly disappointed with this movie but with the Coens another masterpiece may be around the corner. The cinema would be a duller place without them.

This was an engrossing documentary which inspite of some minor directional pitfalls made great viewing. Some earlier contributors to this site criticise Ry Cooder's 'omnipresence' in the film, but if it wasn't for Cooder these musicians might have remained unheard of. In America, native Cuban musicians are not allowed to be paid for public performances.

Some of the camerawork is brilliant, especially the shots around Havana's backstreets from Cooder's motorcycle and sidecar. What comes across to me very strongly, and on a personal level, is how badly sanctions have affected Cuba, and also the resilience of everyday Cubans who are stuck with a rigid government and an opressive US sanctions policy, yet manage to survive and keep their dignity intact.

There are some great personal stories the 90 year old guitarist is wonderful and the songs are fantastic. If the film has drawn attention to Cuba's musical heritage that is a good thing and congratulations to Wim Wenders and Ry Cooder for bringing this brilliant music to the world. This film deserves to stand alongside Scorsese's 'The Last Waltz' as one of the best music documentaries ever made.

After seeing this film about six months back I believe that this is the making of Shane Meadows and I'm sure he will be crossing the Atlantic in the future.

This is a better film than 'Twenty Four Seven'. The two young lads are brilliantly played and Paddy Considine as the older and disturbing Morel is excellent. What holds this film together is it's realistic depiction of the fickleness of teenage friendships. At first we take to Morel as being a loveable but hapless innocent and it's a long time into the film before we, the audience, realise that he is not quite all there.

Shane Meadows portrays ordinary working class people in an honest and truthful light and he does not use them to make social points. The characters in the film speak for themselves and tell their own stories. A brilliant autobiographical film.

This was an exteremely good historical drama. John Turturro is excellent as the tortured genius Luzhin and brilliantly portrays the character's manic affectations such as his strange dancing. Emily Watson is fine in her support role as the sensitive lover Natalia.

The relatonship between chess and near madness is well explored by Gorris and familiar Nabokov preoccupations such as 'eternal innocence' (i.e. 'Lolita') are evident in this film. I think I will now go on to read the novel. It was a touching and tragic ending and it was hard to keep a dry eye. Brilliant movie!

After seeing this film I had a severe affliction of boredom spreading over me like poison ivy. This was such a tedious film with a limp message, supposedly about 'masculine' brutality. Nolte's character was a worthless and unsympathetic loser and how James Coburn won an oscar for this dross defeats me! Coburn didn't even play a decent corpse as he was twitching throughout the scene.

This film also deceives the audience as we are told by Dafoe's narration that the lead characters suspicions were all in his head. So the whole narrative revolved around an idiot's delusions and was used by the director to make some touchy feely point about 'machismo'. Only a drip would find this film worthwhile! Long live people with balls!!

I was very disappointed with this film from the usually very good Soderbergh. The plot was poorly conceived, being a conjugation of 'Poor Cow' and 'Get Carter'. The narrative link with the Loach film is not explored and the director derives the plot almost entirely from 'Get Carter'. What is most annoying, apart from the tedious and dull story, is Terence Stamp's mockney accent. There is nothing more nauseating than inarticulate chic. Peter Fonda's performance was poor and generally the film had no characters of any interest or narrative to hold it together. I too left the cinema just before the end as it was just too much to sit through. Utter crap!!

I would agree that this film progresses at a very slow pace but the story about the secretive world of orthodox Judaism is interesting. In spite of being traditionalist Hassidism is relatively modern to the long history of the Jewish religion being formed amongst Eastern European Jewry in the 18th century, partly as a reaction to anti-semitism and secularism.

The director Amos Gitai has taken on a very difficult task in portraying this sect of Judaism. What is put across well is the incompatibility of conservative traditionalism with a secular society and how suffocating and repressive religious strictures can be. A good story but one that could have shown in more detail the contrasts between the reality of secular Israeli society and the closed world of mysticism.