klc-16 Reviews

The Misfortunates (2009)

The "Misfortunates" are those who don't see this film!

[8/10 · 29 August 2010]

What is it about Belgian Directors? They manage to make films which are about working-class people, full of hard knocks and everyday misery... and yet, not only is there a joie de vivre between the lines, but sweetness and fun. The Misfortunates reminds me very much of the kind of films by the Frères Dardenne...La Promesse, Le Fils... sort of like Ken Loach, but without the total grimness of his vision.

The story is told from the point of view of a young man remembering his time as a thirteen-year-old... at the point where he is taken away from his family because of the degrading environment. I'm not going to go into a description of the film... simply to say that in all the films mentioned above, what shines out especially are the incredibly realistic performances...you totally forget that these are actors, and you learn something about the way "the other half lives", which may horrify you or disgust you, but somewhere in all that, their humanity wins you over. I find this to be a particularly Belgian trait...I can't think of any serious French films that have this capacity for realism, grittiness and humanity. And the ability to make you like something about all the characters, no matter how objectionable they might be for the most part. And of course, these days, there is nothing comparable coming from America, where everything is formulaic. (The closest I've seen to this kind of realism recently in American film is Winters Bone... which comes close but is too manufactured to work on a deeper level.)

The Misfortunates is not to be missed.

Stepping Out (1991)

An embarrassment for all concerned

[3/10 · 4 May 2010]

I honestly have to say that this is just about the worst movie I've ever seen. Oh, I suppose there was a B-level horror flick that MIGHT have been more awful...but at least THOSE films don't try and coast to oblivion on the wings of people of Minelli and Winters' status.

There is not a single person in this film that you believe or care abut for a second, specifically since they are cardboard clichés from every good film ever made. Totally predictable, lacking in charm, verve, innovation, wit or originality ... it doesn't even have the sense to be a parody.

I can't imagine how anyone on this site could have given it more than 3...the fact that there are only about 400 people who voted for it and around 18 people who bothered to make a comment shows you just how much of a flop this film is. Out of respect for those who wrote something nice here, I can only suppose that they are all related in some way or another to people who made or acted in this truly awful film. Someone called this "a bit of fluff"; more like a hairball...

Bright Star (2009)

Bright Star pretty dim

[4/10 · 1 February 2010]

Oh dear... Ms Campion is really overdoing it this time. At least The Piano Player had nudity and Harvey Keitel to keep us awake.

This is a chick-flick at its very worst. Long, tedious to the point of somnolence, she has made all the wrong moves here. First, she chooses Australian actress Abbie Cornish to play the heroine, Fanny Brawne, who perhaps might be good in something else, but here just has NO charisma. Her seven year old sister in the film is more vibrant and interesting to watch than she is.

Second, there is not a single person in the film who you would like to actually know: Keats mopes around with a smarmy smile; his Scottish friend and mentor, Charles Armitage Brown(Paul Schneider) is the closest we see to anyone with a little REAL passion or life to him - unfortunately all he gets to do is be difficult, jealous and obnoxious from beginning to end. The girl's family flicker around the edges, never ever really coming to life... Everyone seems to be playing on ONE note... and the rhythm of the film never changes either. Both these defects most likely can be attributed to Campion, who we expect should know better. Utterly dreadful !

I have adored Ben Whishaw ever since seeing him in Perfume : The History of a Murderer. Well, either Whishaw has suddenly lost all his talent, or Ms Campion just doesn't know how to breathe life into this enterprise, but he has never seemed LESS interesting. And there is just NO electricity between his Keats and Miss Browne. They go through the motions, but I just don't believe they are really hot for each other.

Of course, all the feminists and their boyfriends – nicely trained in Political Correctness – will ADORE this film for concentrating on women's feelings instead of action. In today's society everything is supposed to follow a polite formula and NOT be messy. But I think it is time Ms Campion tried her hand at making a film from the MAN'S point of view for a change. She is stuck in a rut and obviously is the worse for wear.

Nevertheless I will give her points for the visuals and the attention to detail. The shot where the women leave their Hampstead house, passing through a muddy yard with bedsheets hung out to dry and London's St Paul's in the distance was perfect; it gave us a sense of time, place and circumstances, and I was delighted with it. The clothes really did often look hand-made - and often not very flattering, exactly what a woman of the heroine's ilk and social class might be expected to make/wear. (Imagine how sumptuous the clothes would have looked if this had been a Merchant/Ivory film.!) I also give Ms Campion kudos for having managed to find a bevy of actresses whose faces really DO resemble the women who we see in portraits of the period as opposed to the beauties of our own era. They all look just a little less attractive than we might have hoped; this give them a veracity of period which someone like Julie Roberts just doesn't somehow manage to bring off in quite the same way.

I was SO looking forward to this film, principally for Ben Whishaw and buoyed by having re-watched The Piano a few weeks previous to seeing Bright Star. The Piano, though also slow-moving and the ultimate chick-flick, DID manage to have characters who were deep, fascinating, intriguing and believable. Bright Star somehow manages to diminish everyone in it. Ladies, I know I won't be able to persuade you to avoid this - Ms Campion is too well-loved for that. But be kind: leave your boyfriends and husbands at home!

Trapped in a Purple Haze (2000 TV Movie)

eye candy

[4/10 · 22 December 2009]

WARNING! SPOILERS§ (Although there is nothing really to spoil... when it gets this bad it can't get worse...)

The only reason to watch this film is for the eye candy. Otherwise it is a totally predictable waste of time. I guess the worst thing about it is that it doesn't even TRY for any sense of logical realism, it just gets by on clichés.

Problem: he's in the hospital going through withdrawal. All of a sudden he escapes to find Molly, does, but she's dead (of course), goes to a friend's screaming for money... falls down stairs and suddenly ends up back at his parents house hours later but there are no more withdrawal symptoms...huh?

Problem: The father finds him but doesn't take him to hospital, wants to look after him at home with NO medical treatment at all. This from a highly educated man with doctor friends? Ya gotta be kidding! Why would he put his kid through withdrawal without any medical help to ease the pain? Makes no sense at all... except that it allows Max to escape again... as we already know he will...

Problem: Molly has no job but lives in a pretty nice looking townhouse. How's she get the money for that? It's obvious from a later scene that her parents already know she's an addict and won't pay for such things... so again, where does she get the money for rent? Then she has to move out and they end up at a friend of hers.. but after that suddenly she's in a flophouse where she overdoses. Since when does someone at her stage of the game use the money she supposedly DOESN'T have to pay for a hotel, even a cheap one? She'd use the money for drugs and shoot up on the street.

And so it goes. One illogical scene after the other; The scene where Max goes back on the ice during a game... totally ridiculous. He hasn't been to school, his job OR to hockey practice for weeks on end and in the middle of withdrawal. Why would he suddenly show up at the game? Especially since he knows he's been kicked off the team. By then he wouldn't care any more any way...it is just added for phony pathos.

I felt sorry for the actors... having to deal with such a poor script and dialogue straight out of a noon-day soap opera from twenty years ago. Max and his father are the best ones in it...you can see that they have talent, but that it is being wasted. I presume that those who liked this dreck are so young that they have nothing to compare it to. The best thing in the whole film are the photos of the old lady. Oh, and the cute teens...eye candy.

Silverlake Life: The View from Here (1993)

The saddest thing about this film

[8/10 · 9 December 2009]

The saddest thing about this film is that only 8 people cared to leave a review of it and NO-ONE felt it worthwhile leaving a comment on the message boards.

Made the same year as Philadelphia...the Tom Hanks Oscar-winner... this is the film that people REALLY should have seen and given awards to. There is more humanity, life, love, tenderness and beauty in these two people than in just about any other gay film I have seen... and it is all true.

In order for this to be printed I need to leave a few more lines of text: suffice it to say that anyone who REALLY wants to know what it was like to be gay in the 60's and 70's, and to understand just what AIDS was like before the modern drug "cocktails" allowed people to breathe a little easier... this is the film to see.

Oh, and I will add a personal comment about AIDS. Despite everything, there actually has been a silver lining to all the horror. When AIDS first arrived, it was called the "gay cancer", and governments preferred to "let them die" rather than spend a red cent on research to help save a bunch of fags. Then it became clear that AIDS would also be a heterosexual disease. But the government wasn't ready for that; So when straight people began getting ill too, the only organizations and associations that were available to them were those which had been set up by gays themselves (examples: The Names Project: the quilt memorializing all those who died of AIDS; Act Up etc) The result is that people who probably would never have come in contact with gays in their ordinary lives suddenly found themselves counting on them and needing them, because no other organizations existed. This close contact, in my estimation, is what finally broke down the barriers of prejudice and allowed the straight world to finally accept gays as equals. When AIDS first came on the scene, many of us thought that the straight world would use it as a way to come down even harder on us... and that probably would have been true if straights didn't suddenly become ill too; nevertheless, the strides that have been made in gay liberation - to the point that, as I write this, there are at least 5 countries in the world that accept gay marriage - these gains would probably have taken a lot longer without AIDS to bring us together. It is sad to think that all those people - both straight and gay - had to die before our common humanity became more obvious - but if what I am writing here is true, and I think it is - then there is a bit of comfort to be taken in realizing that all those people did not die in vain.

Little Boy Blue (1997)

Loose ends abound

[5/10 · 17 November 2009]

I liked this film for the acting.. Philippe and Savage are very convincing and creepy. And the two young kids are very natural.

HOwever... there are so many loose ends that I can't really give it more than 5, even if it held my attention til the end.

SPOILERS!!! It takes three cops to move the Volkswagon van... how did Savage manage that all by himself? Why did the mother stay with a man who was Savage (pun!) and violent? There is absolutely no reason given for her to love him or be supportive. Background should have been added to this.

The two kids have just lost their mother and father, but they don't seem to be at all upset about it. They go to sleep in the cop's car and when they wake up it's as if it were just another day. On top of that, when they go to see Philippe in the hospital, he is covered in blood, almost half dead, and again their reactions are far too calm and controlled. This isn't the fault of the actors, rather of the direction and writing.

Since when would a woman whose husband is killed and her baby stolen ONLY go to the military and no-one else for 8 years?!! There was absolutely NO scenes in the movie where we got a sense that the mother EVER spent any time looking after the youngsters...in fact, except as a plot device, her existence didn't seem to matter at all; She's just THERE... to f*ck or to hand out beers, but we never get the sense of a CARING woman towards her children... except to Ryan.

The mailman and the young cop seem to be added as afterthoughts, mainly for Philippe to give us some information...but even though they seem suspicious neither of them really get developed.

IN the end, the film intrigues and disappoints in equal measure.

Magnolia (1999)

Overblown and over-rated

[3/10 · 3 October 2009]

I can't be bothered writing a lot about this film; it is SO long that I prefer to keep this short: it is an overblown, predictable potboiler of a movie...derivative (especially of Robert Altman, who would have done a far better job of it) and facile. When I say facile, I am not talking about the "complexity" of the technique used... so many different characters and stories will automatically be "complex". No, I mean that except for the five minutes at the beginning, which were intriguing, he takes far too long to go...pretty much nowhere. The best and only good thing I will say about this is that a few of the performances were worth watching - for about 5 minutes each. If this had been condensed into MAXIMUM 120 minutes it might have been acceptable. As it is, it is HIGHLY over-rated.

My Friend Rachid (1998)

Brave little gem of a film

[8/10 · 20 September 2009]

Warning: SPoilers! I can't imagine this film being made today... certainly not in the climate of obsessive paranoia about pedophilia scares etc. After all, it shows a pre-adolescent completely fascinated by the large penis of his Arab friend Rachid. And we get a quick glimpse of the object in question, plus another quick glimpse at Rachid's bare butt. How many films today would allow that? How many theatres would dare programme it? Too bad - because Mon Copain Rachid is a wonderful little short... despite several un-Politically Correct sequences - Rachid falls into the stereotypes of Arabs that we can find in France ... but that is part of what is refreshing about this film: it dares to admit what most people refuse to say out loud even if they think it... that children DO have sexual fantasies; that stereotypes are often based partly on fact. And that adolescents (and pre-adolescents) can be highly-charged sexual beings - the actor playing Rachid has an incredible sex appeal, and yet he is barely 14. One of the better independent "gay" films worth seeing that most people won't get a chance to... it IS possible to find it on the Web, but only in its French version without subtitles, as far as I know. More's the pity. This film should be shown in schools and used for discussions on sexuality, stereotypes, racism, and good film-making!

Fairytale of Kathmandu (2007)

Yes, but...

[6/10 · 30 May 2009]

An interesting film in many ways... At the beginning the film-maker is in awe of the Irish gay poet who she is following about and doing a documentary on. However, when she follows him to Nepal where he goes for 4 months every year..little by little she begins to realize that he has an ever-growing coterie of young men (around 17 years old on average) who he is befriending, buying all kinds of things for - and then inviting up to his hotel room to spend the night. In the end, the film-maker confronts him directly... after having interviewed some of the boys he bedded. By the end of the film there is a bad taste left in your mouth.

And yet... I know someone in Paris who cruises after young straight Arab and Indian youth (he's of Indian origins himself). And he gets them - so many of them and with such ease... and the guys keep coming back for more. It is usually HE who puts an end to things as he gets bored and wants someone new.

The major difference between the Irish poet in Nepal and the people this guy in Paris gets, is that the Paris guy only gives them a pack of cigarettes or some beer - and not necessarily all the time, either. If they ask for money, he gives them maximum 5 Euros, whereas the Irish poet is giving his guys astonishing sums of money (the equivalent of three months' wages in Nepal), or buying them 150 Euro bikes etc.

So - when the film-maker corners some of these kids, and they begin to complain that they didn't really want the sex, I'm not totally convinced. When asked directly, they seem to feel that they are expected to be indignant...and so they are! Yet the kids in Paris keep coming back for more without the major financial incentives that the Nepalese kids are getting. Hey, how many 17 year old males are gonna complain about frequent and easy sex? They don't seem to mind that it is a guy instead of a girl...especially if they are being the "active" partner.

So the question is... is this film-maker manipulating her audience as much as the poet seems to be manipulating the guys he picks up? The film-maker "doesn't want to moralize", but can't help mentioning that the boys are 17 and he is 50. Would she feel better if he were only 25?

One of the boys the poet picked up many years ago has been helped through school by him, and also has a jewelry shop for tourists that was completely bought by the poet. He considers the poet as his second father (his real father is dead)... and states very plainly that he loves him, and sees nothing wrong with giving back to the poet his affection and his body; he is now married (an arranged marriage) and has a child, but still feels completely linked to the poet. He states that his relationship with the poet totally changed his life - that without him he would have ended up as a poor farmer or a worker in a sweat-shop. His life is infinitely better for having known the poet... and all of this is certainly true. So in the end, who has really been harmed here, apart from the film-maker whose disappointment and standard Western value-system makes her shy away from accepting these relationships as anything except negative? As I said - an interesting film in many ways...in the hands of another film-maker, it might well have come to entirely different conclusions...

Patrik, Age 1.5 (2008)

Real emotions and well-acted

[7/10 · 27 May 2009]

I do not want to concentrate too much on the story... it is relatively predictable - no surprises. Ordinarily I wouldn't give it such a high rating. Except ... it is so beautifully acted, especially by Gustaf Skarsgård as Goran, the the doctor, and Thomas Ljungman as the kid up for adoption...that it really does deserve a high rating.

The situation is not completely realistic, in that I don't really see a gay couple deciding to live in an area that is so completely heterosexual and even a bit homophobic. I would have expected them to find a more mixed neighbourhood - but then again, not knowing Sweden, perhaps they are in a small town which doesn't really offer them many more choices?

I also found the changes in Sven, the doctor's spouse(played by Torkel Petersson, to be a little too pat, both in his original negativism what makes him so extreme in his reactions?), and later on in his seemingly too-easily arrived-at acceptance. This problem in the script might be why Torkel doesn't impress us as much with his acting - his character seems to be less dense and more obviously driven by the writer's needs than his own.

But all of this pales when the realism of the emotions is placed before you. These are people you DO care about - because they make you care. OK...the kid was perhaps too nice for someone who is supposed to be a petty criminal and all-around trouble-maker. But everyone can identify with the basics here. The need for family. The petty ignorance and discrimination of others. The problems of making a relationship work. The stupidities of officialdom. And the way people can suddenly work their way into your heart before you have even realized it.

I hope that Thomas Ljungman and Gustaf Skarsgård end up making more films on an international level. They are wonderful actors (note the look in Ljungman's eyes when told the agency has finally found a family for him; I have NEVER seen mixed emotions more perfectly portrayed..., and considering the small output in Sweden, it would be a crime not to get this talent out into the world at large.

The World According to Garp (1982)

NOT according to Irving

[4/10 · 20 February 2009]

I saw this film when it first came out and hated it. I just saw it again 27 years later. I actually liked some of it... although Robin Williams was totally wrong for the role... What I remember most about hating the film is that it was almost the complete opposite of what I had understood when I read the book. Since I haven't re-read it, I can only give you my impressions from the past - but I am sure of one thing - the film is a paean to family life, whereas in the book, almost ALL traditional institutions - including, and perhaps especially, marriage - are shown to be strait-jackets that we would be well rid of. The only positive in the book is the wondrous nature of children...something that only the very beginning and ending of the film really captures (with that incredibly gorgeous baby floating in the air. Too bad Williams doesn't have a tenth of his charm!) My low mark is therefore from the fact that the film misrepresents the book. As a film on its own it fares better - but only for a few key performances. Mary Beth Hurt is wonderful - I think anyone watching it would fall in love with her. And John Lithgow as an ex football player who has had a sex-change operation is fantastic... he never once camped it up or made the character anything but commendable - and as such his performance had an incredibly integrity. I watched him closely during all of his scenes, and never once was he anything except womanly. Nothing in his performance ever came near the performance of a drag queen... and that made all the difference. In fact, of all the people in the film, his is the only one which is irreproachable. It is worth seeing this film only for his performance.

Late Summer (2001)

emotionally bang-on

[17 February 2009]

Is there anyone, watching this film, that wouldn't fall for the older cousin, Josh? He is not only beautiful, but much more important, he is kind, caring, playful, and wise. His influence on his younger cousin, Adam - whose father has just died - is reassuring and life-giving. More to the point, he accepts Adam as he is - and allows him to accept himself, even before he really understands who he is. One of the most wonderful moments I have ever seen in a film, is the moment when Adam is taken skinny dipping by Josh; Adam doesn't dare take off his underwear, and when getting out of the water, covers his genitals in shame. Josh, while helping him get dressed says, so completely matter-of-factly: "It's called a bone, Adam. You can get'em whenever you want!" What a wonderful way to deal with a young man's sexual feelings! No judgments... no uneasiness about the situation, just the facts... and freedom. Would that we could all have such wisdom! The entire film rests on the shoulders of Chris Nee, and the assured direction of David Ottenhouse. If either had made the slightest false moves, the entire film would have fallen flat. But it doesn't. From start to finish, it works. My only negative is the parents, especially the father, who seems to be disapproving all the time, but we have no indication of what or why. But this really makes no difference to the main story line, which is totally about the two cousins. Why have we never heard more from either Nee or Ottenhouse? They both were on a completely top professional level.

The Curiosity of Chance (2006)

proves that not all gays have style or class

[2/10 · 13 February 2009]

I have yet to see another gay film that is as bad as this one...completely predictable, lamely written, poorly acted, and nary a decent line in the entire film... Even more dismally disappointing is the fact that some people on IMDb actually liked it. To these people I would simply say that you need to set your sights higher, preferably by going and renting some of the good stuff. Examples: Whole New Thing; C.R.A.Z.Y; Just A Question of Love; Ma Vie en Rose; Shelter; The Bubble: Whispering Moon... or even Another Gay Movie - the original, NOT the sequel! There is no excuse for this piece of crap... there are lots of indie films that have been good, original and well acted. Shame!

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Puts me to sleep

[4/10 · 1 February 2009]

In this film, River Phoenix has narcolepsy... a malady that makes people nod off against their will. It is a perfect image for this film, which makes its entire audience (those that have any taste) fall asleep every five minutes. I saw this film years ago... it left no impression on me. so I decided to try it again. Now I know why it left no impression on me. It is vacuous, puerile, self-indulgent (but that is typical of Van Sant when he is trying to be "artistic"). sloppy, and poorly written - if in fact it WAS written. i get the feeling that half of what I saw was improv... from people who had really very little to say. To be fair, there are a couple of witty scenes... especially the one in the x-shop where the magazine covers come to life; But that is hardly worth anyone's time, and since I have already wasted too much of my own on this film i will stop here. Oh, just in case you think I object to the "subject matter"... not at all, but it has been done so much better in so many ways...

Closer (I) (2004)

And so it is

[8/10 · 11 January 2009]

Of the four protagonists in Closer, Clive Owen's Larry is perhaps the most direct...he likens his being with Julia Roberts' Anna as "the princess with the toad". Told that it is a frog, not a toad, he insists "toad". And as the movie continues, we realize that he was correctly describing himself right from the first, warts and all.

Two other people - Jude Law as the aptly named Dan Wolf - and Nathalie Portman as Alice, make up the rest of the quartet of characters who fall in and out of lust/love with each other over a period of years.

What bothers me most about many of the reviews here, is that people complain that people in Closer are unlikeable. Well, so what? Considering how many of us lie and cheat in love - often as much to ourselves as to others - how many of us are really all that attractive? The opening words of this film are from a song by Damien Rice, where he intones "And so it is..." He is singing about infatuation verging on obsession, which is what Closer is really about - the way we obsess about each other to the point of destroying both the love and ourselves; the closer we try to get, the further apart we become. We may insist on the truth, but how will we recognize it if it is not what we want so desperately to hear? Polished performances of a slickly intelligent and often witty script are searingly directed to perfection by Mike Nichols, who has been in this territory before with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". The main difference is that in that earlier film, George and Martha KNEW the difference between surface and reality, whereas the four lost souls of Closer wander myopically through the landscape of their lives looking for signposts. At the end of Virginia Woolf, they at least had each other. At the end of Closer, no-one seems to have anything left at all. Perhaps the main point of Closer is that our images of ourselves can only remain beautiful from a distance; the closer we get, the blurrier it all becomes. This is a sad film in the end, but it is also one of the most adult films ever to be made. After all, stories of princesses and frogs are really for children, aren't they?

Paranoid Park (2007)

another Van Sant expressionless adolescent

[4/10 · 3 January 2009]

Thank god Van Sant has made MILK... from what they say about that film, he has finally gotten off his kick for adolescent males who are long-haired string-beans with expressionless faces.

Paranoid Park is just another in the tedious vein of Elephant. You have to be a lover of teenage boys in order to find anything here that is worth more than a quick glance. What Van Sant basically does is make a fifteen-minute film-short into a loooooong drawn-out affair. But does anyone care beside pedophiles? (I'm using the term loosely - the kid is about 15...) The major problem here is that almost nothing happens. Life goes on... and on... and on... and everyone seems totally bored. This is even BEFORE the kid accidentally causes the death of a security guard. Since there is virtually nothing interesting about the kid in the first place - and since he spends 99% of his time NOT reacting to anything... it makes it VERY difficult for the viewer to care. If he had spent half the film letting us get to know a really nice, fun, interesting kid BEFORE the accident, then we might have been able to feel something for him after the accident occurs. But since he is portrayed as half brain-dead to begin with...

The most interesting person in the entire film is a girl who has more or less guessed what is happening. SHE has some smarts, enough to get the skateboarder to write out his feelings on paper - and it might have been interesting to spend some time with THIS kid... but Van Sant isn't really interested in girls all that much.

The problem with this is that if you've seen Elephant - there is absolutely no need to see this film. Both are "lyrical" and drawn-out "artsy-fartsy" affairs, that are film-making at its most indulgent.

What surprises me is the number of film-critics that indulge HIM by giving such stuff such good reviews.

The Dark Knight (2008)

The greatest thing about this film is its capacity to bore

[2/10 · 22 December 2008]

How could the critics and the public be so WRONG about a movie? Well, the public is easily influenced, especially if they are teenagers with no broad movie-going experience to allow them to contrast this with other films. But the critics? More and more I get the feeling that the reviews we see are no longer about quality but only about sales.

In this world of "reality" shows that are anything but - and MTV music videos that are to what film-making is that McDonald's is to cuisine - well, who can blame them if they no longer have any reliable criteria?

What is WRONG with this movie? Just about everything... First and foremost, we don't CARE about anyone. Whether they live or die doesn't seem to really matter at all. Did ANYONE get teary-eyed over Maggy Gyllenhaal's death? I certainly didn't. We are not really given any time to FEEL anything. Second: no real suspense about anything. We're not given enough information, there is almost no attempt to build suspense... we just sit there passively watching as events keep happening all around us with NO attention to logic. Just one example: the Riddler is left in a locked room with a policeman. He has bizarrely been left without his handcuffs on... and all of a sudden the two of tehm are outside the jail-cell, and the Riddler has a knife at the man's throat. We don't know where the knife came from, we didn't see him overpower the guard, we don't know how they got out of a locked room. This is LAZY film-making... and it happens over and over again throughout this film. Events happen but there is no logical progression. The action scenes. Terrible. Everything is shot like an MTV video. Close-ups of the action that leave us with very little idea of what is really happening. The car-chase sequences were boring, because we had no real idea of who was where. It was all just a lot of close-up chopped editing. If this is supposed to be thrilling, then I suggest everyone go back and watch the chariot race from Ben Hur. No special effects, no insane wild editing in close-ups that don't allow us to really see what is happening... and yet it is three (four, five?) times more exciting than anything in this film. Bruce Wayne/Batman: stupid voice for batman, is he trying to channel Darth Vador? Wooden acting ... no sense of humour. A bore. The Riddler: better than I expected, but not as brilliant as everyone says. OF COURSE he'll get the Oscar, but mainly because he should have gotten it for Brokeback Mountain, and because he died. Everyone else? Just wasted talent... Such a disappointment, after Batman Begins...

Whispering Moon (2006)

high-tech murder mystery

[6/10 · 5 August 2008]

This film - known as Whispering Moon in English - is the first Austrian film I have ever seen. I thought at first that it was German because of the language - but was surprised as it seemed to be much "lighter" and more fanciful than anything I had ever seen come out of Germany. Now I know why!

It is hard to categorize this film - but "murder mystery" comes close enough. Nevertheless, the entire charm of the film is not really the story, but is much more a question of style. Highly inventive and a visual delight, it keeps you deliciously off-kilter as you try to follow all that is happening on screen... with two languages plus special effects plus subtitles occasionally all happening at the same time. The film is obviously one that could only have been made by computer-savvy technicians - and this is also part of the charm as they let us see some of the tricks they are using as a way to deconstruct things right before our eyes. it is also obviously made by and for people used to multi-tasking and our high-tech modern world.

The story-line is rather weak - but that is even admitted near the end by one of the characters. Since I don't speak German I cannot really comment on the acting - although personally I found the main players to be rather expressionless and unconvincing. But this really doesn't matter - one is caught up in the entire deliciousness of the film medium being used to delight us again and again.

I predict that this film, given a bit of a chance and a reasonable distribution at various film- festivals, could eventually become a cult film for various factions of young people today - specifically film buffs and gay audiences. Give it a chance - you'll probably like it!