War Horse - January 2012

That boy is GAY for that horse.

Good film. There are one or two teary bits but for such a sentimental film, I'm surprised it didn't evoke the breakdown I was expecting. It went on far too long. How did the young French girl die - anyone ready the book?

The No Man's Land scene is by far the best bit.

Nothing like the book (so I'm told - I wouldn't bother reading such toss!)

Super 8

It's been compared to The Goonies and ET, yes there are definite and deliberate parallels, but in this film ET is a massively pissed off badass. Oh and he's massive.

The plot is nothing extraordinary; small town bunch of kids in 1979 happen upon a military plot to cover up attempts to recapture a dangerous alien. The sub plot follows main protagonist's relationships with his father following the death of his mother.

...but the most interesting thing about it is it's relationship to those early 80s films - and how the same kind of action is superimposed on the same themes of otherness and sameness, but within a different context.

But it's not the Cold War, and we're not demonising Russians.

So just who is the alien in this film? The anxiety this time is provoked probably by The War on Terror - the unseen menace (that could have been the tagline). When the real menace turns out to be closer to home - embodied in the relentlessly inhumane military?


I'm not saying the film is politically notivated of course - it's a popcorn no brainer. I'm saying the styling and empathy is engineered for a particular emotional response. It's simple terms of good+bad become blurred: The bad guys become the good guys, and the good guys transform into bad guys.

• The black professor who causes the train crash is not a an irrational suicide attempt or terrorist - he becomes the liberator (I'm not sure if him being black is critically meaningful)
• The military who are supposed to be protectors are shown to be the amoral bad guys
• The seemingly emotionally void father learns to open up and forgive and express his love for his child
• ...and most obviously, the alien (whose origin or story is never revealed) is not the mindless terrorist or invader - it becomes the object of affection - we want to protect it. Is that a little bit of maternalism that is lacking in the main kid Joe's life? The momster is not weak, but nevertheless we want to protect it.

I think it's far fetched to say that Super 8 is about decontructing the binary nature of difference to realise that the oppositions are arbitrary and illusory (I just wanted to say something that sounded clever), but it does have a relationship with it's predecessors in it's expression of the anxietyof our times towards unseen agent of terrorism. Just like the Cold War, American Paternalism and Artifical Intelligence was common currency in early 80s films. I don't doubt that the Postmodern intertextuality is deliberate - and successful too. Works for my age group anyhoo.

...and watch out for that anachronistic Walkman!


Well worth watching, but it won't change your life!

Captain America, 2011

It was just what I expected from Marvel. It was just... great cheesy nonsense.

It was no Thor, but the styling was spot on - very Hellboy. Quite camp, and peppered with just the right amount of cringe.

It was boring in parts where it lost pace, and the first third was made uncomfortable by the incongruously deep voice of the skinny Steve. Very jarring. Speaking of which - there was some awesome CGI (skinny Steve), and some not so awesome CGI (train scene)

Chris Evans' and his almost effeminate good looks is utterly convincing has the good natured hero, and Hugo Weaving is excellent as the camp-as-hell Red Skull. Great for cast spotting this film.

Plus, we are loving how Marvel are intermingling their storylines in anticipation of next year's Avengers spectacle. The intertextuality is so very Postmodern dahling! My boyfriend was convinced there'd be an extra teaser after the credits - he'd missed it on Thor. I won't give it away, but it wasn't worth almost wetting himself at his seat for.

It's a film that doesn't quite believe in itself. It was not so much tongue in cheek; it was more... biting it's lip

La Barbichette 2002

Vincent Cassel, directed by Kim Chapiron

Excellent French language short film, directed by Kim Chapiron. Vincent Cassel and two brothers are bored and when their mother calls fo a favour, and the younger brothers disobeys the big brother, they use this game to sort out who's the dominant one.

Barbichette is a game for kids - hold each others chins and the first one to break into a grin gets a slap. Great office game!

I wish Vincent Cassel would hold my chin and slap me.

The Eagle, 2011

Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell & Donald Sutherland

What can I say? This film is Brokeback set in 2nd Century Roman Britain.

Ah - I should have guessed. Romans. Men. Fighting. 

I couldn't figure out whether there's gay subtext, or that it's completely unintentional. I just don't care. Don't get me wrong, it's a watchable film - we watched right to the end. (That doesn't qualify a film as good I know). Good fighting scenes, and the atmosphere and costumes were impressive.

The plot: Centurion who is extra specially brave and skilled wants to re-capture the Eagle standard that his father lost in Scotland. He navigates through the Highlands with the help of a slave who owes him (Jamie Bell). The plot just seemed about trying to regain a totem of his masculinity that was lost with his father's failure. This film just didn't know what it wanted to be or what it wanted to say.

What we couldn't figure out - and eventually why the homoeroticism became more interesting - was why the allegiances of the two main characters seemed so hard to believe. Their motivation just didn't ring true.

Plus PLUS... Why in the name of buggery f*ck was Mark Strong speaking in a really heavy New York Accent? It was really bizarre and jarring.

It could and should have been a better film - it had the potential for greater things and finer feelings.

Instead, we kept wondering when Tatum grab Jamie's more slender frame and give him a nice kiss.

There were moments...

Beautiful and Dangerous, 1954

Robert Mitchum & Jean Simmons

I started watching this film this morning while having my morning cuppa. I'd gotten out of bed late - I'd been poorly for days. I don't usually watch daytime telly, and I certainly hadn't expected to get completely sucked in by this - delightful - movie.

The story briefly is that Jean Simmons' character Corby Lane comes to stay in this small town, she's not short of cash and starts dealing out gifts and money anonymously. From the outset, there's chemistry with the town doctor, 'Doc' Robert Mitchum. Except her good intentions backfire, when the barter-based economy and equilibrium in the town is upset by the sudden influx of wealth. Turns out she had a debt to pay since when she was a baby, the town had a whipround for an operation that saved her life.

It's highly sentimental, full of cliches and the acting is suspect. However, it's really laugh-out-loud funny and it's genuinely charming in it's simple message about community and small town economics. The town drunk, the sherriff, the general store, the vet, the doc, the farmer, the kid on the porch - it's all there. (Yep, it's Bedford Falls)

Okay, it's a 50s allegory about upsetting the equilibrium of the social and economic order by an irrational distribution of wealth, but had they replaced actors with animated animals, I bet it would have been taken more seriously.

Hell, it's just a nice romantic comedy. It even made me find Robert Mitchum attractive, and name my first born 'Digger'.