Closer - 2004

For some reason I feel we were regulars down the Pickle Factory in Bangkok when I watched this first. I may be wrong on that as the memory plays tricks.

Those were among the best Pizzas I ever ate, though I did subsequently review many in Jomtien many years later.

What struck me watching this 13 years later is how contemporary it all seemed at the time. 

30 somethings getting to grips with pre social media and aging rapidly as we progressed or otherwise professionally and emotionally.

The movie isn't as polished or flawless as these actors could make today, though Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are still professionals with a legacy that has not tarnished.

Kung Fu Hustle - 2004

Kung Fu Hustle has to be the best example of a film that has local themes, but is flat-out globally funny. 

Well, OK it might not make sense to a North Korean or Arctic Circle dweller but it is a hoot, and I'm surprised it took me 13 years to get round to seeing as I recall buying the DVD in Bangkok when it was released.

No Country For Old Men

Intrigued by Tommy Lee Jones performance in A Coal Miners Daughter I returned to No Country for Old Men. 

10 years or so later,I'm still not convinced it's as great a movie as the critics claim, but it does have great characters. I particularly found Woody Harrelson's role as powerfully confident, though of course it's short lived, when he is prematurely terminated by the deeply unsettling Anton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem.

Wild Tales - 2014

Wild Tales is laugh out loud funny. It's a compilation of six stories of Argentinian script writing that really bring the human experience to life. It was a pleasure to watch this kind of film making again and it reminded me of the more humorous scenes of some of Pedro Almodovar's movies.

The story about the guy who has his car removed by the city council is particularly pleasing.

Hell Or High Water - 2016

I'm not a big fan of robbery movies or even guns in scripts at all. However this movie more than compensates for a fairly pedestrian story with exquisite photography that captures the bigness of Texas.

Jeff Bridges is a poignant addition, playing a role that squeezes a dimension of acting out of him that we haven't seen before, though he's much older and I guess so am I.

Here's what the DOP Giles Nuttgen had to say about finding the right shot.

"The only way to do that was to keep a shot longer than it could hold and finding something that was almost so banal that you had to wait long enough for what the visual interest would be".

21 Grams - 2003

21 Grams is a non linear story with a surprise ending. There's something very comforting that the original website for the movie from 2003 is still on the internet. 

I didn't even know that 9/11 was a synthetic terror event in 2003.

Coal Miners Daughter - 1980

Quality film making. There are so many scenes in this movie that could be in 1990, 1890 and 2019. 

It's a timeless movie in this and many respects.

Sissy Spacek is, as usual, extraordinary.

As an aside Tommy Lee Jones who plays Loretta's husband in the movie, has a Neanderthal brow, supporting the DNA evidence that Homo Sapien both decimated, coexisted and bred with Neanderthals. 

Online I discovered that Spacek expected fellow Texan Tommy Lee Jones to be a good old boy but soon learned he was a sophisticated Harvard graduate. "I can honestly say he's always the smartest person in the room," she wrote in her autobiography. "Tommy Lee had great instincts about the film. ... He elevated my performance in every way."

Requiem - 2006

I no longer always accept the orthodox psychiatric view of demonic possession and potentially see this (for example) in people throwing women under buses. I'm not saying neurological problems don't exist but I often see a spiritual problem in those often diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar and temporal lobe epilepsy.

I was born in Germany and lived there during the time this movie is set in around 1976. In this respect it was quite a nostalgia trip.

Sandra Huller is once again a great actress who seems to convey a lot while often saying or doing very little. 

Children of Men - 2006

It's the year 2027. Swarms of illegal migrants are flooding into the UK, and police state Britain with all cops wearing black paratrooper uniforms is tooled-up to the nines.

The fertility rate is non existent so the youngest person is in their 20s. There's sky rocketing autism and government bombs going off everywhere in false flag scenarios to keep the sheep in a constant state of fear.

I was gobsmacked watching this movie which in 2006 was clearly fiction. 

Now? 

Not so much.

All Or Nothing - Mike Leigh 2002

Ultimately, the story's characters don't mesh together as smoothly as they should. The thin mother of an obese family including an obnoxious son who subsequently has a heart attack, thus pulling the family together, in a way that is mawkish and doesn't feel coherent. 

Individually they all knock out great performances, but the star is Sally Hawkins who easily has that screen-presence that fizzes and crackles. Her latest news article elaborates on her preference for privacy and perhaps that's why I've never come across her before but I'll be looking into her body of work for more gems.

Many describe Mike Leigh's work as bitter sweet, though for my taste it's about quintessentially working class English characters who live somewhat sour lives, punctuated by moments of respite described as sweet. 

It's still great work.

Update: I have come across Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Original Wicker Man from 1973 is brimming with the sort of occult and pagan symbolism that many today are much more familiar with. I wonder if the six sided star head chopping reference seen above was used in the 2006 remake?

The movie that made it into the top ten worst US remakes ever. 

I notice Jay Dyer has done a review of Radioheads 'Burn The Witch' which is pregnant with Wicker Man symbolism. This is ironic given their recent concert in Tel Aviv where they ignored Apartheid Israel's genocidal segregation of the occupied Palestinians.

A Bigger Splash

If it wasn't for Ralph Fiennes extraordinary performance this movie would have fallen flat on it's face. It's still worth watching.

Toni Erdmann - Movie of 2016?

As I've repeatedly stated on this blog, great movies lift the soul and ask us to examine our own character in the broadest sense. If like me you're not looking for entertainment but for enhanced meaning, Toni Erdmann is off-the-charts-good.

It also has the only nudity scene in cinema that makes total sense. By that I mean we're not inclined to avert our eyes (prurient people excluded) but in some sense to remove our own clothes. For this Toni Erdmann is an extraordinary film. It also explains to us what it means to be a McKinsey consultant, for example, and what it takes to have skin in that game...oh and to be a father and a daughter too.

Great movie.

Traumnovelle - 1969 - Eyes Wide Shut

Traumnovelle is a 1926 Novella by Arthur Schnitzler that went on to be adapted in 1969 for television and lastly by Stanley Kurbrick in Eye's Wide Shut.

All the sexual and occult leitmotifs are evident in the original story and support the claim that Kubrick was the Illuminati's principle film maker though it appears reluctantly towards the end.

There's very little to be gleaned from this version that was removed in the final edit of Kubrick's version days before his death. Much of the narrative feels close to Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz in terms of characters and general seediness.

Deadpool

By now I've been thoroughly humiliated with my claims that Hollywood makes only crap movies. I still think most of its output is complete underpants, but there's no way Deadpool falls into that category. It's also probably the most crackling script since Pulp Fiction with lots of funny lines that a second viewing (or even a third) can yield.

Update: Part II was a stinker.

If you want to make God laugh... tell God your plans.

Ex Machina

Ex Machina is a thoughtful and sensitive look into the world of synthetic humans and artificial intelligence (AI).

I noticed on Twitter recently that Artificial Sex Dolls are paving the way for this technology from an aesthetic/kinetic point of view and no doubt a superior chat bot AI is being developed to accompany this.

I have no doubt that the integration of humans with machines will become increasingly visible in my life time but I self identify as a primate so I'm happy to be a monkey wearing cotton underpants as Terence McKenna once memorably described us.

Most transhuman fetishists are frightened of dying in my experience. This is a spiritual problem with many answers to hand.

Constantine - 2005

Keanu Reeves acts as an exorcist and freelance occult consultant in this movie. I'm not a huge fan of Keanu, though his work isn't offensive and he has many solid movies under his belt. This is one of them.

The only thing worth knowing about the occult is that while we are programmed to scoff at it, the higher up the food chain a person climbs the more likely, no, the more unavoidable it is.

Edge of Tomorrow

Unlike most of his movies, I immediately warmed to this Tom Cruise playing an anti-hero character wishing to stay as far away from war as possible. This is a much more authentic stance than his usual military industrial complex peddling. 

The movie is fresh, well scripted and corresponds with my understanding of the many worlds theory mashed up with John Titor time travel lines.

This movie is Groundhog Day meets Hamburger Hill/Predator. It's the opposite of what I expected it to be in terms of Hollywood movie making and I couldn't have been further wrong. Watch it.

Limitless - 2011

The premise of Limitless is kind of simple and topical for those who keep an eye on smart drugs. What if you could tap into your full neurological capacity including the subconscious bandwidth that is the iceberg of consciousness and cognitive processing?

Mmm yes please.

This is a fun movie that I hugely enjoyed, though I kind of wondered if the choice of book name in the movie was a nod to certain group(s) who seem to have a edge when it comes to inside knowledge and making incredibly smart decisions that outwith us pedestrian mortals again and again. I have worked with people who take smart drugs and it's like competing with an Olympian in terms of Stamina, Mood and Process Capacity though I liked the individual and enjoyed working with them.

NB: The Dark Fields is a 2001 techno-thriller novel by Irish writer Alan Glynn. It was re-released in March 2011 under the title Limitless, in order to coincide with its 2011 film adaptation, the name of the book in the movie is Illuminating.

Searching For Sugarman - 2012

As good a music documentary as you'll ever watch. This is heart warming and also obliquely informative about apartheid South Africa which, we learn, didn't have television until 1976 it was so authoritarian.

It's a great example of how music and art can connect with people who are in a long dark tunnel.