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thetreacleman
Reviews
Helen (2008)
a boring film in scope is still boring
The film-making team deserved ten points for having the right connexions to fund this film. Sadly have become so obsessed with shooting in scope they have forgotten any other element that might make the end product interesting. British critics love anything to do with identity. Make a film remotely along the lines of Hitchcock's Vertigo and they will fall over themselves praising it to heaven. Endless shots of tree leaves . A lead actress with the total on screen charisma of a potted plant. Antonioni used spacial dynamics to stunning effect long before this pair turned up. I thought I would go nuts if another shot arrived with a long slow dolly shot. But hey this is the sort of thing lottery funders and arts councils love to cultivate. Dull. Badly acted. It should have stayed as a short.
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974 (2009)
E its grim up North
The first thirty minutes of this was promising, as gripping as the first Prime Suspect but after a while plausibility began to evaporate in the smoke and gloom of this hellish Yorkshire. It was grim and smoky in the bars. it was grim and smoky everywhere, with more bent coppers than you could shake a leg at. Given that there were so much corruption and that our journalist hero seemed so savvy, how was it possible that he would simply hand over his friend"s "lifes-work" to a "good" Copper casually encountered at the scene of the aforementioned friends suspicious demise.
And then surprise surprise the good copper turns out to be yet another rotten apple. Since all the police were grim and ugly and uncouth and psychotic. And then the clichés began to roll in like the mist off Ilkley Moor. As our hero heads toward marytrdom he glimpses his dead girlfriend, just like Mel does in Braveheart or Russell likewise in Gladiator. It sugars the pill of a downbeat ending. And why was the production design recreating the light-bulb decorations from Eyes Wide Shut in Sean Beans glitter Palace.
The Second Installment concerning the Ripper gets even sillier.
Waiting for Hockney (2008)
Excellent
An excellent debut film. What I most liked about this film was the attitude of the film-maker towards her subject. It never treated him as a joke or patronised him. American Movie, explores a similar vein but the tone could not be more different.
The artist in 'Waiting' confuses time and effort with the production of great art. Great Art, is often a sketch dashed off in a few seconds. However, behind the hand is a lifetime of toil. Our protagonist takes a lifetime to produce one piece of art. He never seems to consider that at such a rate his entire oeuvre would boil down to four pictures. Still his journey to Hockney is hugely entertaining. We might be amused by his naivety, but it seems much preferable to the snide assistant of Hockney, oozing self satisfaction or the utterances of Mr Links. At the end, it seems that our hero, has returned to drawing, thankfully with more alacrity. I would love to know how he felt about the film, with Hockney's critique pretty clear in it. Maybe someone who was at the Q and A could say. A gentle documentary, refreshingly engaged with its hero.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
A masterpiece
I have watched this film so many times and never get tired of it. It is a perfectly executed horror film where the best material met the best director. Polanski can suggest menace with just an open doorway and a cloud of cigar smoke. He lets the audience imagine, which is what computerised terrors never do. Mia Farrow was the epitome of vulnerable beauty. Ruth Gorden is malevolent and funny, grotesque but believable , like some awful clucking hen that feeds on human flesh. Of course Polanski was handed a brilliant idea, but he tells the story with such craftsmanship. The supernatural enfolds within an everyday domestic setting but still remains credible. Brilliant. If you have never seen this movie you are in for a treat. As time goes by and we see so many poor horror films, this movie just gets better and better.
A Canterbury Tale (1944)
They seek him here, they seek him there
Just who is the glue man and why is he doing it? The glue men were Powell and Pressburger rescuing British Cinema from the torpor of naturalism like a couple of Scarlet Pimpernels. This film may not be their most achieved, but it is certainly their most experimental and fascinating. The narrative drive takes a back seat to a rambling story that goes off in different directions, as it pleases. As far as I know it is not based on a novel, or short story. Just how unusual is that in British Cinema? It is Romantic in its use of landscape and has an innocence about it. It also has ideas, and the tale is told with Powell's remarkable sense of composition. You may not think it is having an effect on you when you are watching it, but its like a dream that will resurface again and again long after you have seen it.
The Haunting (1963)
The best ghost film ever
This is a film that deserves the description of spine-chiller. It is one of the few ghost films that actually chills the blood and scares. This is because Robert Wise is very careful to establish a second dimension to the plot. We inhabit the mind of the Julie Harris just as we explore the dark corridors of the old house. She is sympathetic without being wishy-washy. Everyone entering the house has another reason for being there beside the investigation of ghosts. Tension is developed through suggestion, a method completely lost on the makers of the dire sequel. I saw this film as a child but found that seeing it afresh did not disappoint. It has an amazing atmosphere of evil and foreboding. Great direction and a fantastic cast.
Gertrud (1964)
One of the most cinematic films ever made.
You might be dismayed the first time you view Gertrud. Is this a masterpiece you might ask yourself? Nothing seems to happen. People sit and talk. Sometimes they get up and move about and then go and sit down again. When they do talk, it is not always facing one another. Gertrud herself often appears to be in a trance, staring towards another world, a beyond of perfection where no mortal man can exist or match up to her dreams. By the end of the film she seems to have become as bloodless and lifeless as a statue. Whiteness has overcome her and it is as lethal as the powder in the mill of Dreyer's Vampyr.
This is a film that must be watched several times in order for all its qualities to be revealed. The characters movements are exactly choreographed. The decor is stripped down to its essentials. There is nothing in the frame that does not comment. It might appear on the surface to be a naturalistic film, but it is, in fact, as staged and controlled as any Fellini. Gertrud is about the martyrdom of a woman who seeks perfection in a flawed world. Its surface, is as still, and tranquil, as a lake in a park, but underneath, everything is turmoil and volcanic emotion
Mum & Dad (2008)
Dumb and Bad
Cut-price horror with a sadistic streak. Being extreme in your imagery is the usual mode of operation for fledgling British directors these days, so its disheartening to find this is another bolt into that particular hole. How do I get myself known? Lets elevate a few easily raised eyebrows. Like other people on here I found that I had come across all this before and imagery and ideas were old and stale. Who exactly is it aimed for? An attempt to make a comment on our society? In my opinion, it was just tacky and tasteless. It depends I suppose, if you find cruelty hilarious? Regardless of that, a film also has to overcome its budget limitations, something the Brits don't seem able to achieve. How much the film cost is irrelevant to the man in the street who pays his dollars at the cinema. Derivative, is too generous a word for it, but its worst fault is a lethal deficiency in story-telling momentum.