Bad Film: Badlands via inuit panda scarlet carwash
This is one of those legendary films you hear about, and it was being shown in the IFI. The music in it is great (lots of classical composers, including pieces by Carl Orfe), but the plot and characterisation lead a lot to be desired. The former is of "and then another thing happens" school, while the actions of the characters seem largely lacking in any kind of internal logic, though I liked the acting. So readers - Terence Malick, a director I can assign to the bin marked "overrated rubbish"?this is another post that did not quite make it into Frank's...
You probably saw this when it was in the cinemas ages ago, as did I. It is about this guy who dresses up as a bat to fight crime, and about this crazy criminal guy who tries to thwart him. It goes on a bit, but it's all good, and features the kind of well-drawn characters and kewl action sequences that are something of a rarity in long-underwear films. I enjoyed it a lot, liking how it never relented and how all the characters in it seemed very well realised. It also has some great action sequences, with the big car chase bit being a particular favourite. image... 
The other day I went to see Gomorra - you know, that film about the Neapolitan Mafia ("mess with our ice cream? Then you die") based on the book by that guy who has had to flee Italy. I won't say too much about here at this juncture, apart from recommending it to people who like films. While not a tricksy visual film, it does have some stunning visual images in it, and does make running around on beaches in your kecks firing machine guns look like a valid life-style choice.It does maybe suffer from the fundamental problem with films about gangsters - because its subjects are mostly so loathsome it is a bit difficult to have any empathy for them. On the other hand, most of them die by the end of the film (or will be dead in a couple of years time), so it is somewhat uplifting.Oh yeah,... 
I went to see that film about Joy Division – the documentary, not the Anton Corbijn one. Having read Deborah Curtis' Touching From A Distance and been exposed to the mass media I am broadly familiar with the story of Joy Division. Essentially, four lads from Manchester form a punk band, and develop their own brooding and hypnotic sound that meshes well with the intensity of their lead singer; just when the band seem like they are on the brink of mega success, their singer kills himself, torn apart by the stresses of incipient stardom, his emerging epilepsy, and his own tangled domestic situation. The film treads this well-worn path, but a couple of things make it worth seeing even if you know where the road ends. For one thing, sitting in a cinema while Joy Division tunes pump out of... 
I will talk about these at greater length in the future, but for now I recommend that you go and see the following two films in the cinema, while you still can:1. Caramel This is the Lebanese hairdressers film. Even people who have never been to Beirut will enjoy it. 2. HoneydripperThe latest film about people from the Deep South, and how they love to have fun. And it is directed by John Sayles.image... 
This is one of those German Expressionist films from the era of silent cinema. I saw it in Berlin over Easter, with local musicians Picture Palace Music providing the obligatory post-rock/electonica musical accompaniment. The film is a classic of cinema, so maybe you have seen it? Its great claim to fame is that it totally eschews realism in its set design, instead having the action taking place in a nightmare world of crooked buildings and oddly shaped items of furniture items. The story itself has a darkly dreamlike quality, not just for its use of somnambulism as major plot device. This is one of my favourite films ever, and I urge anyone who has not seen it to watch it forthwith. As you probably know, it was, visually, a major influence on later films like Carol Reed's The Third... 
don't fancy yours muchAnd this is another, more recent film touching on Italian fascism. In this case, it is the quixotic fascist remnants in 1960s Italy. The main character in the film finds his way into the fascist movement, mainly as a way of reacting against his suffocating family; his brother, meanwhile, becomes a leftie firebrand, joining the Communists. Much hilarity ensues. This film is, naturally, very different from The Conformist, being much lighter and more formally realistic in tone. However, it all becomes a bit less comedic later on, when the leftist brother sliding from communism to the Red Brigades – will his good looks and appeal to the ladies get him out of this one?Music does not play a particularly big role in this film, but there is one very striking set piece in... 
It was to feed anticipation for this that the IFI screened a load of old Coen brothers films. I take it you have seen this tale of a man who thought he could out-run an implacable killing machine. It was a pretty good film, but maybe not that good a Coen Brothers film. I find it hard not to think that the Coen Brothers well has run dry, with this film being adapted from a novel (as their next is scheduled to be) while their last was a straight remake and the one before scripted by someone else. As film nerds, the Coens have always borrowed and incorporated plot ideas and elements from other films, but they were at least putting them into their own stories or synthesising something new out of the constituent parts. It seems now, though, like they are unable to generate their own plots and... 
This is an old Bernardo Bertolucci film, which was on limited re-release. It tells the story of this guy who gets a job in Mussolini's secret service in the 1930s, and is sent to Paris to befriend and assassinate an anti-fascist exiled professor. It's not really about the story, though, with the art direction, cinematography, and costume design being far more important than any kind of plot summary. I particularly liked the bit where the protagonist's then fiancée is wearing a stripey dress that merges into the horizontal shadow-lines coming from the blinds in her room. There is also the general sense that while Italian fascists might have been thuggish or useless, they did at least know how to dress, even if those who followed fascism were just doing so out of a desire to fit in.So... 
As you know, in the USA Grindhouse was a long film of two segments, one directed by Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof) and the other by Robert Rodriquez (Planet Terror). In Ireland, these were split into two separate films, and I mentioned seeing Planet Terror in a previous zine. Since then I saw Death Proof on DVD in a friend's place. It is a very problematic film, being mainly composed of long scenes of excruciating boredom interspersed with a couple of scenes of action excitement. Its one great saving grace is a killer Tarantino soundtrack. More recently, they showed the American Grindhouse in the Irish Film Institute. I was there. Planet Terror is still a most excellent film, not obviously cut for the omnibus screening. (Death Proof was a bit less excruciating than when watched on DVD.... 
In the IFI I saw a load of Coen Brothers films again (and Raising Arizona for the first time). They were showing them to whet people's appetites for No Country For Old Men. I particularly enjoyed seeing Barton Fink again, as the last time I saw it my then girlfriend found it all too much and walked out of the cinema. The film is almost as oppressive the second time around, though at least you know what unpleasant thing is going to happen. Raising Arizona I found a bit strange. The print was not great for this, but I found it a bit hard to get over the kidnapping-baby premise and relax into this being a relatively funny film. The film is nevertheless an engaging look back to a time when Nicolas Cage was not That Cockfarmer Nicolas Cage, and it is the source of the line "As in, to... 
This film by that Ang Lee fellow bears comparisons with Paul Verhoeven's The Black Book, in that it features spies, occupiers, collaborators, weird sex, degradation of women, and so on. The film is set during the period when the Japanese were expanding their control of China, the story being about a woman using herself as bait to lure a leading collaborator to his death. There is a lot to like in this film, with the setting (occupied Shanghai and pre-war Hong Kong) in particular being very well evoked. The film looks great as well, reminding me somewhat of films by Wong Kar Wai and that guy who made Shanghai Triad in its stylishness and art direction. The film nevertheless has features of which I am less fond. The sex scenes are pretty disturbing, and they do rather go on a bit and... 
As you probably know, the conceit of this film is that it is meant to be found footage, recorded on a camcorder by the characters in the film. It starts with them being at a going-away party for one of the characters, but then the city they are in (New York, naturally) is attacked by a giant monster. The rest of the film features a lot of people running around going "Oh Jesus, what was that?" as they try to escape Manhattan or rescue friends or whatever it is that people do in this kind of film. I found it very involving, with the human scale treatment of something as outlandish as a monster-smashes-city setup being quite affecting. The original Japanese Godzilla film does something similar with one scene in a hospital for people who have been injured by the eponymous monster*.... 
I HAD HEARD some pretty great things about this movie before going to see it, and as superhero movies go it had a lot to live up to, but the good news is that Iron Man more than delivers and, with one exception, managed to hit all the right buttons as an origins story and the birth of a new Marvel franchise on screen.
For anyone who doesn’t know this already, Iron Man is the Marvel comic book hero invented back in 1963 who usually featured as a member of the Avengers superhero team and is one of the small number of superheros (like Batman for example) who rely on technology for their powers rather than any mutation orientated origin.
SusiQ even accompanied me to the cimena to see this one in action, a rare event in itself especially for any action orientated films, and she was... 
THERE ARE MANY words and expressions I could use to describe this film; darkly funny, twisted, unsettling, poignant in parts obvious in others, outrageous, anti-American, politically incorrect, mad… but I have to admit having seen it yesterday and had time to reflect upon it overnight I think the one overwhelming thing that strikes me is the amazing resemblence that “In Bruges” has to “Father Ted” and the lads from Craggy Island.
Before I get into that I suppose I’d better do the usual summary for anyone out there (living under a rock) who doesn’t know about this film yet. The basic plot revolves around a couple of Irish hit men who have to cool their jets “In Bruges” and wait for further instructions after a hit goes terribly wrong.... 
Let me take a break from my incredibly fascinating recounting of things seen at the Nightmare Before Christmas, to instead let you know what I think about this well-known film. As you know, it is about three brothers with problematic inter-relationships who are on a holiday together in India, travelling on a train to Darjeeling. It was made by that Wes Anderson fellow who has made many other popular films. Since his Rushmore, I have derived decreasing utility from his works, but this one really affected me, with the film managing to be both funny and poignant. I suppose Anderson is helped by the three excellent actors (Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson) he has playing the brothers, and the astonishing backdrop of India and the superposh end of its train system does not hurt...