High Fidelity (2000)

High Fidelity is the story of Rob Gordon, a disenchanted thirty-something who has owned his own record store for four years, scratching out a living through his deep love of music. Self-absorbed and moody, Rob covets a life he doesn’t have and lacks the confidence and drive to step outside of himself. His girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle), leaves him for another man, and Rob gets to thinking about the women he has dated. Ranking his “top five breakups”, he tracks down the women he believes have made the biggest impact on his life.

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I must admit, I came to High Fidelity with mixed feelings. I had read Nick Hornby’s excellent book and adored it. It seemed unlikely that the film could live up to Hornby’s wry tone and black cynicism.

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I should have known better. The film is tightly scripted, the relocation to Chicago is totally acceptable, and the cinematography makes great use of the locations. Cusack himself, as Rob Gordon, is charismatic and endearing, and easily lifts this film beyond introspection. Gordon’s self-loathing is both real and comical, the supporting cast is excellent and the music references a-plenty make this a deeply enjoyable film.

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The back and forward flips in time, which had the potential to undo the rhythm of the film, are well-observed, and the matching of music to time-period is straight and unforgiving.
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Jack Black’s casting as the moody wannabe musician Barry, one half of the “Musical Moron Twins” (“I can't fire them. I hired these guys for three days a week and they just started showing up every day. That was four years ago”) is perfect.
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Barry’s band is just like every band I’ve ever had the pleasure to be around. In fact, Barry reminds me a little too much of a particular friend, who was, shall we say, a little obsessed.

Interestingly, Black almost turned down the role of Barry, despite the writers (including Cusack) writing the role with him in mind. It’s the interaction between Rob, Barry and Dick (played by Todd Luiso) which I love the most.
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Catherine Zeta Jones is perfect in the role of the self-obsessed Charlie, and Cusack’s sister Joan (one of the most under-rated women in comedy) is stunning as Laura’s best friend Liz.
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Cameos by Bruce Springsteen, Tim Robbins and Lisa Bonet are subtle and work well within the film, which, while clearly a vehicle for Cusack’s charisma, is a brilliant ensemble piece.

GRINDHOUSE - Planet Terror (2007)

How many movies have a one-legged pole dancer with a high powered weapon attached to her stump? Welcome to the Grindhouse.



Grindhouse is Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Sin City) and Quentin Tarantino’s (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill) loving tribute to the Grindhouse cinemas of the 1970s that played back-to-back exploitation flicks. There two feature length films under the Grindhouse banner, Planet Terror (Rodriguez) and Deathproof (Tarantino), along with several “previews” for fictional films, created by guest directors.



Complete with scratched film and unscheduled projector outages, Grindhouse screams B-grade, with a modern edge in terms of special effects and it’s toungue-in-cheek tone. These films are not for the faint hearted though, and the graphic violence, big budget action sequences and considerable gore are taken to new heights from the 70’s films it sends up. It’s retro cool is quite appealing too.



Originally released as a double feature, Grindhouse bombed at the US box office, and so the two films were separated for the international release. Deathproof will be in Australian cinemas in November, followed by Planet Terror.



PLANET TERROR



An outbreak of toxic gas as a military base unleashes a wave of flesh eating zombies that spread the infection with contact of blood and other unidentified bodily fluids. However, a small percentage of the population are immune to the virus. Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), a “gogo” dancer down on her luck meets up with her recent ex-boyfriend, El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) and they soon realise that something is going wrong when their car is attacked and Cherry loses her leg, ruining her intentions to become a standup comedian.



Down at the hospital, Dr Block (Josh Brolin) and his anaesthetist wife Dakota (Marley Shelton) have some relationship “issues” as the hospital becomes over run by zombies. Along with some bumbling law enforcement personnel, a local diner owner, the crazy babysitter twins and other randoms, the ramshackle posse make a last stand against the zombie doom sweeping the town. Cherry Darling finds her true calling with help from a series of interesting prosthetic legs. The result is quite devastating.



Ok it sounds very silly and it has been done before, many, many times. But that is the whole point, and it has never been done this sexy, extreme or deliberately amusing. Random sub plots sprout throughout the film, but never go far, leaving you laughing and wondering “Why?”. The larger than life characters in the film are quickly developed and explored, though the reason for most is this is not apparent. It is senseless to explore this film in any great detail, because the plot is purely incidental. Don’t expect any intellectual stimulation from this movie, it has been deliberately omitted. Like me, you will probably find yourself just shaking your head in disbelief, which is the only real response to a true exploitation flick. In short, this could be the most stupid movie ever made, but they have done it brilliantly. It is the darkest of comedy.



Planet Terror will appeal to fans of Tarantino, Rodriguez and B-grade splatter films. If you liked SinCity, Kill Bill and From Dusk till Dawn, you’ll thoroughly enjoy Planet Terror. If you aren’t too squeamish, and have a black sense of humour, you’ll probably enjoy this film too. Everyone else should stay well clear.

The Third Man

Some movies are worth your time only for one particular performance. A recent example would have been seeing Johnny Depp in Pirates Of The Caribbean. An earlier one that comes to mind was Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men: Jack had a couple of scenes early on and the courtroom scene at the end (“you can't handle the truth…”) and utterly filled the screen. The rest of that plodding film was just padding until Jack came back.

An even earlier example was way back in 1949. In the movie The Third Man, Orson Welles had, maybe, a total of fifteen minutes on screen, it's a solid hour into the movie before you meet him and yet his part dominates the film.

The Third Man follows an American, Holly Martins — played as a bit of a naïve optimist by Joseph Cotton, on his arrival in Vienna shortly after the war to find a friend of his, Harry Lime, but finds when he gets there that Lime has died in a motor accident. As Martins starts talking to Lime's associates and his girlfriend he gets suspicious about the death and keeps pressing to find the true story.

The screenplay is all noir thriller with questions of loyalty and morality and blah blah — written by Graham Greene no less — full of plenty of wit and speed. Oddly enough, though, I find the screenplay the least successful part of the movie. The plot is a little silly and some of the dialogue is dated and affected (“You were in love with him weren't you?” “I don't know. How can you know a thing like that afterwards? I don't know anything anymore except I want to be dead too”)

However, in one scene Welles and Cotton are on a ferris wheel, comparing the people below to tiny dots (“Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”). They get to the bottom and Orson Welles, who wrote the speech himself, pulls out this cracker:

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.”

It doesn't sound to me like a convincing justification for running a black-market penicillin racket but jeez it makes great cinema.

A more successful part of the movie was the black & white cinematography — Oscar-winning, in fact. There were crazy angles, harsh lighting, big shadows. It looks great.

The first time you see Orson Welles's character — as I say, a good hour into the movie — is a genuine, cinema-popcorn-choctops-curtain-raising moment: a cat meows and rubs against a pair of shoes, Martins yells, a light from a window hits the face of the figure across the road. Orson Welles is perfectly framed by the light and grins charmingly, teasingly at his old friend. It is a spectacular introduction to a character.

Certainly, another standout performance is that of Anton Karas, the musician who provided the unforgettable score to the movie. Played entirely on zither the music is utterly perfect. The jaunty and yet souless main theme — The ‘Harry Lime Theme’ which all of us have certainly heard before — seems to evoke the post-war Vienna the way nothing else could have. It was a stroke of genius to us it. Apparently, Karas was simply playing in a local restaurant for tips when Carol Reed — the director — came in for a meal during the Viennese unit photography. Reed was transfixed by the music and urged Karas to join him in London (staying in Reed's hotel room the whole time) to record the music for the film.

The music is delightful, the photography magnificent but all you remember after watching this film is just Welles's cuckoo clock speech and his glorious introduction in the doorway. His was that one particular performance.

The copyright on the movie has lapsed and you can watch the whole thing on Google Video.

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

I recall seeing a Seinfeld episode that ended the same way as Midnight Cowboy, with Jerry cradling Kramer in his arms on a bus travelling to Florida, with ‘that’ music playing in the background. It’s such a famous movie, that references to it still form a part of popular culture, as it’s assumed that most adults have seen it. But is this a safe assumption to make? There are so many movies to choose from these days, why would a young thang pick up a dusty DVD of a movie that is nearly 40 years old? It may have won Oscars for Best Screenplay, Best Director for John Schlesinger and remain the only X-rated film to win Best Movie, but surely it must be dated by now.

I first saw Midnight Cowboy when I was a very impressionable 17-year-old, and really just a jangled mess of hormones and emotions encased in human form. The film hit me like a blow to the solar plexus. I was incredibly affected by this movie, as witnessed by the mascara streaming southward and ending up dripping off my chin. I watched it again recently, now that I’m all grown-up and settled. No makeup this time, either. Did this film still hold its power? Let’s see.

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Midnight Cowboy tells the tale of two down and out characters in New York. Jon Voigt is excellent as country boy Joe Buck (handsome but more hick than chic in cowboy hat, boots and jacket) who heads to the big city to make his fortune as a hustler. Dustin Hoffman, too, nails the character of Ratso, a lame, sickly outcast who is barely surviving living in a condemned building. The story line is based around the relationship that develops between these two as they live in the poverty, the filth and the decay that permeates the existence of those who fall between the cracks in society. Their unlikely friendship takes place as winter approaches, Joe finds (barely) making a living out of sex is not the cheerful romp he expected and Ratso becomes increasingly ill.

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The settings, the characters and the storyline could have been as sordid, depressing and repulsive as a bare-bones précis of the plot would seem to indicate, but the subtle direction of Schlesinger, and the fine performances of the two main actors make this film anything but sordid. Neither Joe Buck nor Ratso are ever portrayed as anything less than entirely (and occasionally nobly) human. We see their inner lives, and we know their dreams and regrets. They may be caught in the ugliness and degradation of poverty, but they are not part of that ugliness.

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Of course, nearly any film that is so much a part of an era will show its age at times. There are some scenes that seem a little unsophisticated now, and are definitely too long. The party scene in which handsome and hokey Joe Buck makes quite a splash, with its attendant drug taking, must have seemed very avant garde and daring in 1969. Now it’s just tame and a little lame. Ultimately, though, this is a minor and easily forgiven quibble.

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Overall, the film stands up well. In fact, Midnight Cowboy stands up very well, indeed. It is a truly moving film, and one that I would heartily recommend. If INC had left any stars to give after his review of Before Sunrise, I would give them to this film. And, if it were mine to give, the moon as well. It remains a firm favourite of mine.

Before Sunrise

This is not a movie review. This is a declaration of love.

Richard Linklater’s much underrated 1995 feature, Before Sunrise, is the best romantic comedy ever.

Yes, ever.

The plot is simple enough. Ethan Hawke is Jesse, a 20 something American about to end his European holiday and fly to his home town in Texas. Julie Delpy is Celine, a young woman of a similar age from France. They meet on a train, and form a connection that is sufficiently interesting to Celine to cause her to get off the train in Vienna and spend the night walking around and talking to Jesse.

A year earlier, Ethan Hawke made me want to never watch movies again with his awful role in Reality Bites. Don’t even get me started on what the hell Janeane Garufalo thought she was doing being in that stinker, or we’ll be here all day, but the point is that Ethan’s character in that particularly bad movie seemed designed to embody all the absolute worst clichés about young people at the time (otherwise known as ‘people my age’). The character was educated but dumb in every way that mattered, shallow, annoying, self centred and utterly unlikeable.

I was greatly relieved to discover that Ethan’s character in Before Sunrise was everything his Reality Bites character was not: sensitive, articulate, emotionally intelligent, and insecure but in an endearing way. And Julie Delpy as Celine was, without wishing to overstate the case, freaking awesome, portraying a character who was naïve on many levels and yet wise beyond her years in every way that mattered, not to mention being more than a match for Jesse intellectually and emotionally.

I first saw this movie some time in 1996, when it came out on video. I have no idea, given how much I hated romantic comedies at the time, how on earth I came to hire this film, but I did.

I was 23 years old, I had never been in a relationship that was anything other than very short and very bad, I hadn’t even been on a date in, quite literally, five years, and I had pretty well given up on the whole notion that romance could ever happen to me. I had grave doubts as to whether a relationship could ever be anything other than a series of battles for control leading inevitably to dissatisfaction at best and painful separation at worst.

It is not surprising that I was utterly blown away by the scene where Jesse and Celine share their first kiss, in the pretty close to perfect setting of Vienna’s giant ferris wheel at sunset. This was not just because I really wanted to be Ethan Hawke at that moment, but because it was such an honest portrayal of two people finding and expressing a deep and true connection.

Eleven years later, and after six happy years of marriage, those post adolescent insecurities are a distant memory, but I still love this film. Partly it’s because of the dialogue and the fine acting. Partly it’s because the managed to fit a poem in without it seeming out of place, which is pretty impressive when the poem went like this:

Daydream delusion, limousine eyelash / Oh baby with your pretty face / Drop a tear in my wineglass / Look at those big eyes / See what you mean to me / Sweet-cakes and milkshakes / I'm a delusion angel / I'm a fantasy parade / I want you to know what I think / Don't want you to guess anymore / You have no idea where I came from / We have no idea where we're going / Lodged in life / Like branches in a river/ Flowing downstream / Caught in the current / I carry you / You'll carry me / That's how it could be / Don't you know me? / Don't you know me by now?


But, more than anything, it’s for a scene where Jesse and Celine get to discussing what really matters to them, and Celine says this:

I believe if there's any kind of god it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Sure, Celine and I have a few theological differences that we would have to work through if I was single and she wasn’t a fictional character, but the idea that what really matters is found in the connections we form with each other has never been better stated in any film, or anywhere else really. If a good film is one that inspires, that challenges, that pushes us to be better than we are, rather than one where lots of stuff blows up, then this is, I maintain, the best film ever made.


Rating: Every star that has ever graced the heavens, plus a few more.

Action action we want action

His name is Bourne, Jason Bourne. Well it isn't actually but you know what I mean. There have been two previous movies in which Matt Damon plays an amnesiac who is remarkably good at fighting, killing, and driving various cars. We know that he is some kind of special project of the CIA and that it is a really bad idea to piss him off. Which of course the American government does every chance it can get.

So the movie opens where the last one (Bourne Supremacy) left off. Bourne is killing something, or driving something, I actually can't remember. The next hour and a half goes by with Bourne fighting people, killing people and driving things. All while avoiding many international police forces, who all seem to know exactly what he looks like.

I often wonder about that. If you were a police person and there were large numbers of wanted people that it is your job to catch, and then the CIA issues another one, would you really remember? Or would you be more interested in catching speeding motorists than recognising a fairly unremarkable looking man who is walking down the street as an internationally wanted criminal?

Bourne receives some help from another CIA agent, which was a very weak point in the plot. She explains why she is helping him, endangering her job and life in the process, by saying that she once did something to him and feels guilty. But they never explain what she did to Bourne and she really only exists as something for him to protect. They just don't make female CIA agents as tough as the men do they?

The movie is interesting in showing that the US government can be its own worst enemy. I am pleased that they didn't suddenly decide to make the bad guy a terrorist as that has of course been done much better by Die Hard. And you just can't compete with the brilliance that is the Die Hard franchise.

Overall verdict: Great fighting, stoic faces and car chases. It is what it is and does it well. 2 fighting fists

The Good Shepherd (2006)

Ain't she gorgeous?!?

I was peachy keen excited to watch this movie. How did the CIA actually start? And a love story as well? Wow! This'll be GREAT!

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But not even Angelina Jolie could kick start this slow and boring piece of complete drivel. Maybe I shouldn't have been drunk when I started this particular DVD, but I certainly couldn't have lasted as long I did while sober. Oh. My. God. Could Robert de Niro have directed a more boring movie? Is it 1961? Is it 1939? What darn year is it, matey? Matt Damon, as a supposedly cold personality who doesn't mind (eventually) being pissed on during a College initiation ceremony, just comes across as wooden. Bring back Jason Bourne, I say! And despite the warm, honeyed tones of William Hurt (I could listen to him all. night. long. Mmm! Mmm!) I switched this movie off after 30 minutes to watch a rerun of War of the Worlds.

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Watch out for Xenu, Tom!

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2 Days In Paris

A well established couple, made up of a French woman (Julie Deply) and an American man (Adam Goldberg), live in New York and are travelling around Europe. They end up in Paris, where the woman is originally from, and much to the boyfriend's horror, every male friend the woman bumps into is an ex-lover. Well, he had no idea she had so many ex-lovers, and she hadn't even mentioned most of them, and well, the trip mainly makes the boyfriend realize that he doesn't really know anything much about his girlfriend at all.

This is one of those films that is uneven. Sometimes it drags, like the actors are simply doing acting exercises. But in some ways it makes the film just totally real, and you really do feel you are the characters. No one plays a lunatic American neurotic as well as Adam Goldberg, who is obsessed with the mold spores on the wall of his girlfriend's apartment and gets furious when he cannot get his plethora of allergy medications over the counter like you can in the US. The film also underlines the differences between Americans and the French. For the French, love is really the most important thing there is. Delpy's character is still in touch with all her lovers, whereas Goldberg is in touch with none of them, having severed them from his life like a cancerous growth, the moment they split up. Much of the humor comes from the way these two characters do not seem to understand each other, yet are compelled to keep trying. In the end you realize there is a real connection between them, despite having been through two of the most unerotic sex yet realistic sex scenes ever seen on celluloid:

Sex Scene 1:

Scene: the couple is under the covers. The guy says:

"This condom is too fucking small for my dick."

Girl: "You said that in Italy too. In Italy the condom was too small too."

"I can't help it if in Europe they make condoms for gnomes."

They don't manage to laugh it off. Sex aborted.

Sex Scene 2:

The couple are having sex, the girl gets on top.

Guy: "Why do you always have to go on top?"

Girl: "Because I like to go on top. It's how I can come the easiest."

Guy: "Yeah, it's how you like it. But what about me? Maybe I don't get that much out of it. For all the talk about men see women as objects and and use their bodies for their own gratification, what I'd like to say is, fuck that. It's crap. The only emphasis these days is on the penis and how the woman can use it in any way she likes to get off. All that matters is the female orgasm!"

Girl gets off him: "Okay, I don't want to have sex any more. You've rejected me. I feel rejected. Do you know how it feels when a guy rejects you?"

Overall I would give this film a 7 out of 10.

Stardust (2007)

I went to see this movie with high hopes. I love love love The Princess Bride and was in the mood for another rollicking, amusing, fantastical adventure. Stardust seemed to be just the ticket to brighten my day.

The film is based on a novella by Neil Gaiman (which I haven’t read) and with one notable exception, has a knockout cast ably directed by Matthew Vaughn. In a nutshell, the tale tells the story of young Tristan Thorn (Charlie Cox), the now-grown result of one stolen night of passion in the magical kingdom of Stormhold (conveniently located next to his village of Wall), who is very smitten with the comely, vain and shallow Victoria (Sienna Miller). To win her love, he vows to bring to her a fallen star which they had seen fall into Stormhold. Unfortunately the star is also spotted by three old crones, who also want to retrieve it as it will restore their full witchly powers and the lost beauty of their radiant youth. So, at the same time as Tristan bravely scales the boundary wall into Stormhold, Larnia (Michelle Pfeiffer) also sets forth, both of them hoping to secure the celestial prize. Tristan finds the site of the fallen star, and finds there a young woman named Yvaine (Claire Danes), who (surprise!!) is the star that fell from heaven.

This is where the film fell thuddingly to earth for me, I’m afraid. It might just be my own perverse and, frankly baseless, prejudice but I just can’t stand Claire Danes. Oh, how she irritates me! Why oh why would I go to see a movie with Claire Danes in it? Why? Aaaaarggggh! She chokes me up with irrational spite. The woman can’t act. She’s plain. Plus, she’s got this really weird super-long-waisted, short-limbed thing going on, kind of like Matthew McConaughy. But not as pretty. Or as orange. Why is she in this film? Why? It needed an ethereal beauty. It needed acting. It needed sly humour. Claire Danes has none of these things. It needed… dare I say it?...It needed Gwyneth.

But if you ignore the Danes problem, it is a bit of enjoyable fluff. Our hero and his star encounter adventure, misadventure, oddball characters and true love. The film rollicks along, but not with breathless pace, and not with as much charm as I would have liked. Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert de Niro, Rupert Everett, Peter O’Toole, Ricky Gervais (did I mention the knockout cast?) are all terrific, though, and appear to have a lot of fun hamming it up. It’s no Princess Bride, but it’s not totally rubbish, either.

If I was going to award it a score out 10, I'd give it 6.5.

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Top Ten Billion Movies!

I love moving picture shows!

I've invited a few bloggers to join me in my frenzy of adoration for the flickering reflection of our lives, our loves, our mistakes and our yearnings. Kids films, chick films, high dramas, documentaries, comedies, fantasies and horror films are all waiting to be discovered or revisited.

If I've missed you out, it's not because I meant to, it's because I'm extremely short on little grey cells. If you'd like to join, email me at billsandmoon@gmail.com .