This movie seems to have been unfairly overlooked, really. It’s the first collaboration between director Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and in a lot of ways is just as good as their latest Oscar winner.

Like any Kaufman script, it’s very surreal and very unique. There’s even a bizarrely placed musical number. Gondry’s visual style is evident in every scene. The movie seems to have a neat and tidy message about being in touch with nature etc, only to turn the whole thing on its head in the final moments.

Lots of chances to see Patricia Arquette in the altogether (or Hilary Duff in a training bra, if that’s what you like – albeit with a fine covering of hair) – and Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto, Tim Robbins and Robert Forster are all brilliant.

This movie really doesn’t stand up well to post-movie thought at all, but while I was watching it, it was one of the most intense movie experiences I’ve had in a long time, certainly one of the best movies of last year. Time will tell if it’s just a one-view trick, but right now it’s rubbing shoulders with some of my favourites.

Think of it as It’s a Wonderful Life turned upside down (that won’t fully make sense until you see this cut). There’s the usual time travel ‘rules’: careful what you change etc. It’s a hokey set-up (you read your journal, you physical flash back to that moment… ‘kay…), but it’s very well executed with clever visual and sound effects, and the mystery creeps up almost like a horror movie. I’d also question the movie’s title: Ashton Kutcher’s actions in the movie are hardly ever akin to the mere beating of a tiny insect’s wings.

One bitch about the DVD I bought – it doesn’t have the theatrical cut on it, and I’d love to compare them (though I’m sure I’ll always love this ‘downer’ ending more). I think the other ending is present in the deleted scenes, but it’s not explained how that ending is actually reached (maybe I’ll pick it up as I delve through the other extras).

I guess I don’t like the costume drama stuff much, but I expected something more interesting from Robert Altman, who till now I hadn’t seen a less than brilliant movie by. I found this no more interesting or unique than the average TV Agatha Christie rip-off. There’s one or two interesting scenes, and of course you can’t go wrong with such a cast as this, the performances are fine, but to me it seemed to just plod onward, each scene indistinguishable from the next. Thank god for Stephen Fry, or I would’ve been really straining to get through the last half.

One of the many Lock, Stock.. type films to come out of the British film industry after Guy Ritchie ‘took the world by storm’ (as they say), this isn’t as bad as I’d feared (feared, because the movie, despite not being my type, stars Nicola Stapleton, who is, and I’d hate to find myself hating any Nicola Stapleton movie).

One weird thing this movie did was make me question my criticism of Don Cheadle’s accent in Ocean’s Eleven – there’s a guy in this movie with nearly the exact same accent, and I’m sure it’s not put on.

Mark Letheren has the most interesting part, playing basically a movie-length, steadily increasing, never-ending acid trip, after he inadvertently places his palm on the worktop in the house of a guy who makes extra-strength LSD. This leads to some great lines (“You’re so far gone, you don’t know your way back. You’re lost forever, spaceman.” and exchanges (“You’re white with pink wings. Beautiful!” “You’re off your tits!”)

Not a bad waste of time. The DVD has interesting extras – the director used to shoot warzone footage for news channels, and there’s some of his work included, plus a 20 minute making of, narrated by and very much supervised by the director, unlike these promo things that are often named “making of” featurettes, so it almost makes up for a commentary and stuff.

Nicola Stapleton, btw, isn’t even on the DVD cover so I didn’t expect much of her, but she rips apart a number of scenes in her inimitable mouthy style. She really needs to be noticed more.

There’s nothing new about Constantine – we’ve seen it all, from The Exorcist to End of Days, many times before – but it’s a lot better than many satanic movie failures. With Keanu in the lead, you can’t help but make comparisons in the visual style to the Matrix trilogy he’s spent the past half decade in, and there are nagging similarities (he’s dressed kind of the same, unseen forces, a little bullet-time even). He’s not a great actor, but he does the physical stuff better than most modern action stars.

Rachel Weisz is kind of dull, I much prefer her in comedy, but there’s some nice support from Tilda Swinton (Gabriel), Peter Stormare (Lucifer), and Djimon Hounsou (Midnite). The visual effects are stunningly nasty.

There’s a strong sense in this movie of Oliver Stone having a lot of ideas left over from making Natural Born Killers. It’s made very much in the same style, similar sort of soundtrack, similar photography by Robert Richardson, similar locales etc. It’s a much lighter movie in one way, a much darker movie in another.

Ennio Morricone turns in some of his best and most memorable tunes here (a double whammy that year with Adrian Lyne’s Lolita, I remember buying both CDs in one day and within 2 straight hours becoming a Morricone fan), the main theme instantly sets a mood and tone, while “Banjo in the Desert” is wonderfully spaghetti-western-ish, and “Old Family Souvenirs” and Grace’s theme accompany her sad backstory with perfect emotion.

This movie was, I think, the first time I saw Jennifer Lopez, when I saw it in the cinema in 1997, and it’s weird to watch her now. You can barely see any hint of the megastar she’s become in this performance. In my opinion, her acting has always far outshone her music (not that I’m saying either are particularly ground-breaking: here she’s practically identical to Salma Hayek’s character in Desperado), and it’s almost bizarre to see her in a movie like this now.

There’s a lot of odd cameos in this movie too – Liv Tyler appears for about 10 seconds as (let’s consult the IMDb) “Girl in Bus Station”, and Laurie Metcalfe has a hilarious moment breaking down as Sean Penn breaks down over being a few dollars short of a ticket price. Billy Bob Thornton, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix and Jon Voight have near equally tiny roles, but they end up almost more memorable than the leads or anything else in the movie.

For all its little moments and details, though, U-Turn always seems to be missing something. It’s nearly 2 hours long when it should probably be more around the 90 minute mark. There’s something else missing. I have no idea what it is, but I know it’s missing.

I was pretty bored by this one. The actors can be as great as they want (and they’re all pretty damn good – though the Oscar nomination for Bening seems a bit of a stretch, ahem, Julie Delpy, anyone?), and the score by Mychael Danna is pretty nice, as is the art direction, photography, etc.

But it means nothing without a decent story, and for at least an hour this one chugs along pretty dreadfully slowly. And it’s all so mean-spirited. I get the feeling towards the end that I’m meant to feel proud of Julia, feel triumphant for her or something, when all I can think is, “what a f**king bitch”. An interesting character, true, but I won’t sit with her for the length of this movie again.

I feel like I’ve written about this movie too many times before on my site(s), either babbling or straight reviewing or mentioning or whatever, but what can I say, over five years after its release it’s still an all-time favourite of mine that will never go away, and I haven’t yet reviewed it after how many hundreds of reviews on Textpattern, so it’s about damn time. This viewing was special, I watched it simultaneously with Sarah.

The eyes get me in this movie. Every single character has the most beautiful eyes. Here they take part in a match-cut; there, a dissolve to the sun and the moon; even Sabor the tiger’s eyes are perfectly drawn. They’re always so focused, intense, concerned, mischievous, in love. I love when Jane draws Tarzan on the blackboard and gets to the eyes and slows down, drawn into her own black and white reproduction of the guy she’s falling for, ”... I’ve never seen such eyes…”

The music gets me in this movie. Primal drumbeats, dramatic strings, Phil Collins and Marc Mancina make a perfect team. Even the manic “Trashin’ the Camp” is enjoyable, letting the animators let loose with a truly old-fashioned Disney scene.

Tarzan is just full of tiny moments that make me gasp, make me cry, make me laugh hysterically in a way that few things can get me to do. The humour, I guess, is just precisely in line with my own sense of humour, and where others might titter or smirk a little, I die in this movie; the baboon chase, Jane’s reaction to Tarzan bearing over her carrying her on the vine, her telling the story of this encounter to her father and Clayton (“And daddy, they Took My Boot!”), Tarzan mimicking Clayton (“No! nononono!”), tiny little aside lines (“And he walked, on his hands – like this!” “Oh, I see now! Like Aunt Isabelle!”)

I love how the scenes flow into one another – how, for example, just as Tarzan is finally reaching a form of bond with Kerchak, you see a glimmer of love in Kerchak’s eyes (those eyes again), and a gunshot cracks that storyline open, says, “Sorry, there’s a girl and a bad guy coming, you’re gonna have to pick this up later.” And immediately following that bombshell, comes the humour again, Tantor denying that the gunshot may, in fact, have been his backside.

I could just go on about this movie for ever… the way Kala breaks down when she knows Tarzan is going to leave her – not by looking at him, but by the sound of the shoes he’s wearing, clip-clopping towards her from inside the treehouse. It’s so crushing, so simple. The hands motif, distancing Tarzan from Kala, connecting him to Jane. This is before I even get into the breathtaking animation, the deep canvas technology making the vine-surfing completely mesmerising, the colour palette, etc. I’m just totally, deeply, madly in love with this movie.