I was surprised to find on looking this movie up on the IMDb, with this cast (Jeff Daniels, Jena Malone, Paul Sorvino), that it was actually a TV movie. It’s one of those rare exceptions to the format that turns out actually a lot better than a lot of theatrical releases.

Jena Malone delivers great voiceover narrations – in Goldie Hawn’s Hope (another great TV movie, btw), in the recent Saved!, for example – and does another great one here, in addition to her onscreen performance. The editing and score are suitably frenetically MTV-styled, making a high school academic decathlon seem as fast-paced and physical as the more typically movie-portrayed sports.

The film presents quite a beautiful quandary and, like the test paper they come into possession of, really offers no hard answers in the end. Ultimately you can’t deny the outright badness of the world, and the cheaters out there – it’s up to you if you want to stoop to their level and succeed or waste your life trying to do it “right” (oops I made that into a biased statement lol). The movie’s based on a true story which makes it all the more scary, and the mandatory post-script text blocks detail some quite humourous follow-up stuff that re-enforce the message even more.

Weird movie, this one, about a dance marathon in the depression era, sort of a precursor to the reality television fad. People have called it “gruelling”, “disturbing”, “harrowing”, etc, but I didn’t really see it for the most part. It gets interesting in the last half hour when you finally feel sympathy for the main characters and realise their plight; but mostly it isn’t particularly well set up, and they just look like dummies who are putting themselves through hell for no reason. I’d rather watch something more recent like Series 7: The Contenders, or, hell, just any old reality TV show, to get the same message: people are stupid.

I feel like I’m having a sex week this week, lol – Best Little Whorehouse, Belle De Jour, Closer – and now, what better way to end than the movie about the guy who, arguably, made all these movies possible.

I really didn’t like Bill Condon’s last movie, Gods and Monsters: matter of fact, I fell asleep in the cinema. But Kinsey is my kind of movie. It has interesting subject matter, perfect performances (including a bunch of people, like John Lithgow and Tim Curry, who I just love to see onscreen), a great score by Carter Burwell (seriously, what was going on with the musical Oscar nominations this year??), and interesting visuals (no I’m not talking about Kinsey’s slideshows :-P) and structural ideas.

I’m not quite sure why Laura Linney has been nominated for this movie: she is, as she always is, brilliant, but she’s barely onscreen and she’s given far more interesting performances; I can, however, understand why Liam Neeson was given the cold shoulder. His performance is very awkwardly close to his Oskar Schindler in places: he even has a crying moment, in which he says something very like, “I didn’t do enough, I could’ve saved more,” etc. This is just a nitpick: his performance is otherwise brilliant.

What is most interesting about Kinsey is perhaps the most reasonable explanation why someone would want to make a movie about him all these years later: it’s kind of worrisome how little things have changed since his book. It kind of does seem almost like his work and efforts were in vain, because we still talk about these things behind closed doors – there are still so many avenues of human sexuality that haven’t been properly explored and understood. We still all kind of as repressed, if not moreso, as our parents or grandparents were back then.

This movie crept up on me, weaving its way into my mind slowly but surely to a series of end shots (just around about 3) that completely floored me. It reminded me of Wicker Park. Like Wicker Park, it’s about love triangles of sorts, but the subject matter is dealt with way more harshly, way more frankly, with dialogue way more coarse.

At first glance it appears that most of these actors are playing roles they’ve played in some form already but you quickly realise that these roles of deception are being played by the characters themselves. This movie is drowning in deceit and doubt, those monsters that destroy relationships so fast. It winds up being all about trust. I can’t fathom exactly why I broke down crying during the final shot of Natalie Portman, not just yet, but it’s got something to do with how much I personally value trust, how much I miss it so often, how much I recognise how dangerous it can be, and yet I still want it so much.

A truly mesmerising film I can’t wait to sit down to again.

Wow… all those Oscar nominations and other awards and no love for the one thing that truly deserves recognition. You know, I love Johnny Depp as much as a teenaged girl, but this year, Paul Giamatti really should be in his spot. His performance here is my favourite from the whole year, wrenching my heart out with a mere close-up, time after time.

Looking past the wine tasting, which is obviously quite omnipresent in this movie, and is just a personal prejudice (so bad that I probably couldn’t listen to a person talk like Paul Giamatti talks about wine in this movie for more than a few minutes without wanting to punch them in the face, lol), I can really see how some people have fallen in love with Sideways. It’s an incredibly honest, no nonsense, funny, sad, and true buddy movie. I still feel a little like it’s this year’s Lost in Translation, though.

When the movie’s funny, it’s truly, truly laugh out loud funny; and when it’s sad, it’s bring out the anti-depressants sad; but these moments are fleetingly dispersed in a lot of slow and repetitive dinner and date type chit-chat scenes which bring the movie down for me.

I seem to have missed every other Mike Leigh movie since Secrets and Lies, so I’ve not seen Career Girls or All or Nothing. So after Topsy-Turvy, which I personally couldn’t stand, I was overjoyed within the first few minutes to see that Mike Leigh is “back”.

This is an incredible movie, incredibly flatly told, no text blocks at the end explaining “what happened next” etc, it just tells you what happened, and it’s really not quite as you might expect from movieland. It ends on a downer and leaves you there. I’m not sure whether I’d really say it’s about abortion, so much as it’s about facing up to consequences. In the end it doesn’t matter what Vera Drake does, why she’s doing it, and why people want her imprisoned for it; what hurts the most is that the pain is spread to her close family and friends. It’s quite an eye-opener in that area.

Imelda Staunton is tremendous, and Leigh knows it, letting the camera just stay on her face as she reacts to the world around her. These are the kind of slow shots and scenes that never become boring or dull. But where Leigh’s style shows best, perhaps, is in the many moments where the screen feels crammed with the hustle and bustle of day to day working-class life. He really does know how to work those actors.

So far, with only Sideways to watch, this is my pick of the Best Picture nominees to win. Indeed, to me, it feels like the kind of movie, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs before it, that should win the Big Five (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay). It’s just that exact type of solidly built, perfectly executed pieces of film that deserves that kind of recognition… and they already owe Eastwood for Mystic River.

Personally, I don’t imagine I’ll be watching it again as readily as Clint Eastwood’s last movie; and though I was pretty moved by Million Dollar Baby, it was nowhere close to the level that the other movie got to me.

I didn’t see “the twist” coming (not that it’s really a twist). I’ve tried not to read any other reviews of the story, and I’d come to the assumption that maybe the title had something to do with Swank becoming pregnant and having to choose between her boxing title and child (not a bad story in itself, I reckon… hmm, maybe I should’ve kept that to myself…). The second half of the movie is played with stunning tenderness and attention to detail, with scene after arresting scene, and Swank is heartbreaking. (there… I didn’t issue spoilers there did I?)

This one caught me by surprised. It’s been in my queue of things to watch since long before Christmas, and I thought I’d never be in the mood for it. I had no idea it was a musical, had no real idea what it was about exactly, and it turns out to be an instant favourite of mine.

There’s so much to hate, yet I couldn’t help but find it catchy. I’ll even admit to finding myself standing up during this movie and sort of dancing along to it. And I hadn’t been drinking.

Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds are amazing, possibly the best performances (certainly in Parton’s case) I’ve seen from both of them. The music is, as I said catchy, and well, gosh darn, I just loved it.