Reviews

This film turns into exactly what it is trying to satirise, a second rate sports movie. it has very little pacing, sharpness or wit primarily because it is trying to please everybody. Vince Vaughan is given an absolute shocker of a script to get through and Stiller's talentless wife succeeds, as she did in zoolander, to murder the film.

the best moments come with the absurd slapstick humour, spanners being thrown, people being run over etc., but these seem to come out of no where. Stiller's character has the best moments, presumably because they came from him and not the dreadful writer director who squeezes the life out of most moments for potential humour.

I felt that this movie would have been much better if it decided to be a gross-out - a la the farrellys - or an clever satire on American life - a la Christopher guest, it hints at both and ends up being a watery mess.

it's a shame because as an idea it clearly has legs and includes hilarious cameos from lance armstrong and David hasslehof who were good sports for doing it.

a no brainer for a hangover day...

I can say, without feeling too stupid, that is my favourite film of all time.

It has it all, firstly an incredibly brave screenplay that brought Raymond Chandler forward a generation after Bogart's best attempts to turn the great author into an insomnia remedy.

The casting of Elliot Gould as Marlowe is a stroke of genius - this Marlowe is undoubtedly very cool, but his 'coolness' comes from his idiosyncrasies, nerdy quirks and inability to fit into defined social circles. Sterling Hayden's performance, for me out-does his work on Dr Strangelove and can be added to Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy and Brando in The Godfather as one of the finest examples of character acting you will ever come across. His 'Hemingwayesque' alcoholic rages are violent, visceral and disturbing and yet he contains a brittle fragility that draws you to his performance.

The shining light though is Altman. Not only did he get the best career performances out of his finely assembled ensemble (did Gould, Hayden or Van Pallant ever do better?), but also produced one of the best shot films of all time. Only bettered in this era by Coppola's The Conversation (not a bad film to come second to).

On top of all this is an overwhelming sense of the auteur, the soundtrack, camera work and acting performances all combine to create a synthesis of near perfect cinema.

Turn your computer off, run out of the house and rent/steal or buy this film. Watch it, you won't be disappointed.

firstly i'm a huge wilco fan and therefore was always going to like this, even if it was directed by michael bay and shot on a ninety eighties camcorder. It has fantastic footage that allows you to get into the 'wilco world' and generally made me very jealous.

however i don't believe sam jones has any clout as a film maker. The biggest flaw seems to be that it doesn't get what yankee hotel foxtrot really is as an album. Even in the commentary Jeff Tweedy shows his surprise at jones' inclusion of live versions of songs from earlier albums like 'being there'.

The big problem is that the album clearly changed a great deal after mr bennett left the band and jim o rourke turned a collection of good and slightly less than good rock songs into a ground-breaking piece of rock and roll. O rourke made the album great, hearing the versions that were painstakingly put together before Jim came on board proves this and yet Jones failed to make him a central part of the doc, relagated him to one joint interview with Jeff Tweedy when he says nothing.

Unfortunately this film only tells half the story and therefore feels half-finished and padded out with lots of material that could have been put on the, already very healthy, special features discs. Having said all this it is still worth watching but not worth worshipping, a bit like yankee hotel foxtrot (unless you're listening to it on vinyl of course!).

If anyone is remotely interested in becoming a film actor then they have to watch this film. Jack Nicholson is the very definition of presence, control and sexiness.

The film itself is a gem of 70's Hollywood but doesn't quite stand up to the decades later films - it's message seems rather clumsily put across and the script has a few pacing issues. However these factors should not be enough to put you off a fantastic work and a great period piece. Even the most cynical viewer has to sit through it at least until the 'diner scene' and get your notepad out 'cos Jack gives you a lesson.

On the face of it, this was always going to be a cinematic treat. Hal Ashby, who in my opinion had the greatest sense of humour in Hollywood directing Peter Sellers, one of the finest comic actors of all time.

What i didn't expect was an excellent supporting cast with superb performances from Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas and a watertight script from Kosinski. What gave me the biggest pleasure was Ashby's subtle portrayal of his own politics. Sellers' character's rise and rise is set against, in the beginning at least, images of the socially deprived. In most of Ashby's films there is a strong sense of the anti-establishment but what is brilliant in this movie is that Ashby gets inside the establishment to ridicule it and yet at the same time bring across a strong sense of humanity in the richer character's isolation and loneliness.

Politics or not Ashby's perfect pacing bring the best out of Sellers whose film career, Strangelove aside, was hit and miss. This movie is definitely a hit from the most underrated film director Hollywood has ever had the arrogance to forget to miss.