Hmm… this, yet again, is a movie that’s been on my “to watch” list for far too long. I’m not sure I’d call myself a John Carpenter fan but I’ve liked a lot of his work, and this one had a lot of good things said about it. I’m not sure if I’d agree with them but I still enjoyed it a lot. The movie kind of plods along for a while like a standard thriller but really got interesting for me when Roddy Piper (yes, the wrestler) finds a pair of sunglasses that allows him to see the aliens that live among us. I mean you can’t get much more 80s than that lol.

What I really loved about this segment of the movie was the surprising touch that not only can Piper see aliens around him but it also “translates” various pieces of advertising. A typical billboard suddenly, through the glasses, reads “OBEY” in bold black and white, etc. I’m not sure if this was the first time anything like this had been done, but it’s about as succinct as it gets in damning our media-driven culture and it’s ridiculously bold to find in a movie like this. I don’t know if it stretches well over a feature running time, I kind of got over the wow factor quickly following that absurd line I quoted above, lol… but it’s certainly worth a look.

The movie comes in three distinct acts, three generations of one family, the taxidermy of the title really only coming into play in the final third (though I’m sure there’s some clever way in which the title applies to the whole movie – I really haven’t been able to think about it that much lol). The first segment has a soldier escaping from his drab existence into perverse fantasies which ultimately cross over to reality where he impregnates his superior’s wife, leading to his execution. In the second, we see the child of this strange beginning as a champion speed eater in what feels like an origins story for Augustus Gloop of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, lol, only again it’s repellently filmed. The third segment has this man’s child, a scrawny taxidermist reluctantly taking care of his enormous (seriously… enormous) father and feeding up equally enormous caged cats with butter until he accidentally leaves the cage open… as always, I’ll leave off the even more bizarre final turns of the story summary.

If the movie’s trying to say anything, it does so with unwavering pretension. The ending of the movie has a sort of cutting comment to make about art, the final image being (trying to avoid spoilers) a work considered as art, over-elevated as such, which through the course of the movie we have learned enough to know better. Or something. I’m not gonna pretend to have made up my mind about this one, lol. I think it’s the first Hungarian movie I’ve ever seen, it’s certainly unique, it certainly got a reaction out of me, and it’s certainly very well made technically (I don’t think I’ve ever seen such horrifyingly realistic cinematic vomit). If like me you appreciate anything different and can stomach almost anything, this is absolutely worth the time.

Here’s another movie that pretty much had me from the moment I first heard about it in Mark Kermode’s cryptic review on Five Live. He described it as a zombie movie but not a zombie movie, set entirely within a radio station, where the epidemic has something to do with language… and I’m not sure if I can do any better than that. It’s one of those movies you feel desperate to avoid spoilers on, the kind that makes me just want to write here “just see it,” lol.

What I will say is something about the cast. I’ve never seen any of the three main actors in anything before* (there’s a couple of other roles, but as I said, it’s mostly combined to a single radio studio) but it is simply one of the most perfect ensembles I’ve ever seen. This threesome feels so genuine, and that is about the most important element you can have at the start of a movie like this. Stephen McHattie absolutely revels in his role as the wannabe shock-jock lumbered with a smalltown morning show, just as Lisa Houle relishes being the straighthead reigning him in, just as Georgina Reilly channels early Anna Faris as the sacrificial assistant.

The movie at first, because of McHattie’s character, reminded me most of movies like Talk Radio, and it is simply a joy to sit with these characters on a regular morning for them, some great monologue, gentle ribbing etc – but soon enough stuff starts to get strange, then stranger, then slightly frightening, and finally, without warning, actually kind of hilarious. I think some people will have problems – if they don’t have problems from the start, lol – with the final absurd turn of this movie, but I absolutely loved it. I do think there’s more to be made of what it seems to think it has to say about the nature of words, the dispersal of information etc, but if all you’re expecting from this is a little Canadian horror, then there is so much more here you’ll be in heaven if you’ve got a head.

^*okay, looking at the IMDb, it turns out I have in a few little things, but I didn’t recognise any of them lol – point is they’re not exactly stars.

I had to watch this again in the end before I felt remotely able to write about it and I’m still unsure of what to say beyond simply knowing this is an incredible movie. This is my first experience of Philip Ridley’s work but on the strength of it I’ll certainly be looking back over his back catalogue, which I’ve heard even more good things about than I did this latest production. When they talked about this movie on the Five Live movie podcast I knew I had to see it because it sounded fascinating… it turned out to be even more so than I even expected.

The most recognisable aspect of the story is the Faust-like “deal with the devil” idea – best done in cinema so far, perhaps, in Alan Parker’s Angel Heart – but to make comparisons between this movie and that is barely touching the surface of the painful depths it goes into with the main character Jamie, played terrifically by Jim Sturgess. Where Parker’s movie blended Faust with film noir, Heartless – with the rest of its cast including the likes of Ruth Sheen and Timothy Spall as Jamie’s parents – feels more like Mike Leigh‘s Faust by way of the recent Harry Brown …and still that doesn’t begin to cover it.

Jamie’s a young man born with a large birthmark on his face that makes him feel like he’ll never be loved as others around him, living in a terror-stricken city that he feels completely unable to deal with. We see scars on his wrists. His father is dead, and in a shocking early scene his mother, too, is taken from him (slight spoiler, sorry; but this is a movie I believe can’t even be spoiled if you’ve seen it 10 times). There seems to be something supernatural afoot, and Jamie in his desperation and sheer loss with the world (Sturgess plays much of his role with an almost bemused expression on his face even at the most horrendous scenarios) finds it all too easy to believe, so when a man steps in claiming he can fix it all with a molotov cocktail, he kinda figures what has he got to lose?

It’s at this point when I first watched the movie that it really and truly grabbed me. For reasons that will be clearer the better you know me, I’m something of a sucker for stories where wishes are granted by supernatural means, and the way Jamie’s “wish” is “granted” here, it’s hard to describe but I believed in it completely. If you hadn’t guessed, his wish entails the good riddance of his birthmark, and the love of an Eastern European girl he met earlier in the movie. If you hadn’t guessed, too, all is still far from as it seems. He gets all that, more, and bizarrely the strange man’s young Indian helper as a daughter… which makes this strange man just a little upset.

This is where I lose my train of thought as to where this review is going, lol. This movie just has so much in it that I won’t even feel like I can adequately sum up my thoughts about it after 5 or 10 viewings. I just know that I will watch it that many times. While the movie is assuredly of the horror genre, and has many spooky, grisly, indeed in places outrightly B-movie outrageous moments, it is also far from – as the title might suggest – heartless. The theme of the movie is torn between the beautiful lyric (from a song sung by Sturgess on the glorious soundtrack) above and the sentiment expressed by Jamie’s new and shortlived neighbour AJ, played by Noel Clarke: “That’s the real bravery. To know nothing means anything and still wanna get out of f**king bed.” The last half hour of the movie changes everything you feel beforehand, and that’s why I needed to watch it again, and I’m still wanting to go back for more. For what it is, it’s a stunning movie, heartfelt, dangerous, and willing to be a little strange. Sturgess is fantastic, and the soundtrack beautiful. You really have to see this movie.

What really struck me most about this movie was the atmosphere. As I often do, I tweeted about it while watching, and looking back one of my most succinct comments was that it felt so chilling that a Dementor (those soul-sucking ghouls from Harry Potter) could’ve made it. The movie opens on a young couple relocating somewhere in Ireland, the wife pregnant with child… they should be happy, you’d think, but melancholy hangs like a cloud over every move they make. You can’t help but wonder what darkness lies in their past, nor hope for the best of them in this new life (coupled of course, with the awful knowledge that you’re watching them begin that new life in what you know is to be a horror movie).

The reason they’re so sad is, they’ve lost a child before, but the sadness seems to spread beyond that. It feels utmostly raw in a truly British sense, that these are people kind of living in fear, struggling with life itself, even before any cinematic horror steps in. In other words, it’s the best kind of horror movie. Morton’s character spots a strange child living nearby, and a reclusive old man who damn near physically abuses her. The next thing you know, this girl’s home burns down, and she’s suspected by the community because they believe her to be a fairy changeling…

Morton and husband adopt her, and I think that’s probably as far as I need to go with any kind of plot description, lol. Though I’d agree with the recommendation of this as “a British Orphan”, it’s so much more than that. In Orphan, there’s that element of being slightly on the side of the evil child – at least there was for me, lol, and I don’t think I was alone… there’s something a little knowing, almost trashy there in that movie that brings out your own dark side. Here, the situation is so much heavier atmospherically and the situation that much more doubtful and real. One really doesn’t know what to think of the child here until more is revealed, at which point you feel too desperately for Morton to even question siding against her.

There’s a whole theme that runs right through to the end that makes you long to believe that Daisy is simply different, and victim herself to plain narrowmindedness, which is one the greatest and most common themes in horror itself, but it’s pretty hard to believe as the movie wears on. The climax of this movie is one of the closest things to making me physically look away from the screen that I’ve seen in ages, it’s really that tense. I admit the ending left me slightly disappointed… it’s not so much open as simply unfinished. But I’ll certainly watch this again in the future, and it’s easily one of the better British (ok, Irish, whatever…) movies I’ve seen in the past few years.

I probably don’t need to say how brilliant newcomer Mhairi Anderson is as the eponymous Daisy because in a movie like this I simply wouldn’t sound enthusiastic as this at all if the child actor weren’t perfect… but just for the record, she’s perfect, as are Morton, Mackintosh, and all the rest of the cast. I watched the movie a second time before finishing this review and it was just as compelling, so I feel more than confident in recommending it.

The reviews I’d read for this were overall so-so, even those coming from apparent fellow fans of the duo, and despite there being a decent director at the helm (Arthur Penn, of Alice’s Restaurant, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Miracle Worker, albethey years before this) I guess this is why I’d passed on it for so long (in addition to its being widely unavailable outside of pricey imports).

So to the movie, and I have to start with the brilliant tagline (as seen on this poster)… “What more do you want?” with which I couldn’t agree more. This movie within minutes took me back to my excitement as a teenager whenever these guys were on TV. It opens with them on a late night talk show doing their “upside down” gravity-defying table trick, after which Penn idly comments to the host that he wishes someone were trying to kill him. In the scenes that follow it is entertainingly set up that Penn and Teller are fond of pranking one another (and not just small pranks either; early in the game Teller sets Penn up at airport security getting through the metal scanner). The stakes get higher as the movie progresses, the pranks escalating to the point where the line between fake and real begins to blur, and, without trying to spoil anything too much, let’s just say this movie really does deliver what it promises, lol.

The final scenes had me laughing so much, actually out of shock I think more than anything, that I really couldn’t believe my eyes when I read so many disappointed opinions on the IMDb message board and comments. As the tagline suggests, I really don’t know what more anybody could expect from a Penn and Teller movie. It’s brisk at 90 minutes, it has a few magic tricks, a lot of fake blood, a healthy lesson in skepticism, and finally an all-out f**k you in its finale. It really is worth checking out.

As with Charlotte Gainsbourg in Charlotte For Ever, there’s a pure-aesthetic-ness that accompanied Brooke Shields almost everywhere she went in the mid-to-late 70s, and here is no exception. When she winds up on horseback towards the end of the movie, I’ll admit I personally couldn’t have been happier no matter how pointless the rest of the movie really was.

Like I said I was kinda stuck over what to write about this one but then I found the perfect one line on an IMDb comment, which simply says “too cute to be bad” and that’s really this movie in a nutshell. To continue the connection with the past couple of reviewed movies, like Sundays and Cybele it’s a sweet-natured Lolita story of sorts too, though it really harks back more to the likes of Little Miss Marker…

Peter Fonda wins Brooke Shields in a poker game then carts her across the country and they get involved in a treasure hunt. If there’s anything controversial it’s only at the end when he appears to sweep her away from the orphanage in a convertible. Still, overall, it’s really more fun than anything else, and for me just the pure shots of Brooke at that age in jeans on a horse are more than worth the watching for.

The plot, if you can call it that, is simple… Serge Gainsbourg plays an heavily alcoholic (we see him throwing up in the sink – apparently Gainsbourg genuinely doing this for the camera – and pissing blood – it’s not for the squeamish) screenwriter, sole guardian of his daughter, his wife/her mother having died in a car crash which may or may not have been caused by him. Big Gainsbourg is suicidal, Little Gainsbourg apathetic and a teenager. There are arguments, nudity, it’s all very French. That’s… about it lol.

I kinda feel compelled, even though I respect all involved in the movie, to say, it really is pretentious twaddle. But like “Lemon Incest”, there’s just something about it… and maybe it is simply that Charlotte is just such a joy to look at, clothed or not; or that Serge has that non-acting way of acting brilliantly, his face so worn down by a life truly lived. There’s pure aesthetics here that need no human hands to turn into art, and it’s something I’ll come back to likely again and again.

To me, this is one of the best versions, if not the best version, of the “Lolita story”. I have to explain what that means to me because I know some would be quick to disagree because of all the controversy about the “original” Lolita and direct adaptations thereof. I use Lolita as a shorthand for any story that has this complicated type of relationship between an older man and younger girl… some are sexual, some are not, but they all bring something to the table of what I think one of the most important discussions to be had, and Sundays and Cybele brings heaps to that table.

The movie’s closest recent relative is probably John Duigan’s Lawn Dogs, which bears the same unique quality as Sundays in that the relationship concerned is immediately made somewhat more “appropriate” by the older man being a kind of child himself, a victim of the horrors of war resulting in amnesia. He comes across Cybele (whose name is never actually given until a crucial moment at the end; one could argue the French original title would probably make the whole thing more poignant) sort of accidentally but the nature of his attraction is immediately clear… there’s nothing lecherous here whatsoever, just a lonely man who finds happiness in a beautiful child’s face and then finds that she needs him too. Of course, as in life, not everyone sees it that way.

There is a beauty to the second act, which mostly concerns the man’s regular Sunday meetings with Cybele, which I haven’t seen in a long time and is hard to put into words. As they walk along the river in what seems to be a constantly thickening haze, sometimes seen in the reflection of concentric circles on the water surface (“We’re in our home now,” Cybele says over this image), I lost myself in this movie as I have in few others, and truly didn’t want it to end. Though the movie takes a tragic turn, it’s these earlier, happier scenes that will stay with me, like the best kind of summer romance movies, you almost feel like you had an affair with Cybele too, and no matter where the movie ends, nothing can take those moments away. Cybele not only refuses to tell anybody else her real name at the movie’s emotional climax, but denies the name given to her previously by the orphanage, leaving us the viewers as the only ones left who really “knew her”. Like I say it’s a rare film that breaks through the screen and touches me so powerfully.

I seem to be a strange Kevin Smith fan, though perhaps in fact that’s the norm. Like the bulk of his fans, I love his most early and iconic work, the Jersey trilogy of Clerks., Mallrats, Chasing Amy and from there the other of his works set in the “View Askewniverse” – Dogma, to a lesser extent Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (meh, it’s fun), and most recently the surprisingly brilliant Clerks II. And I’m among the very few who actually think Jersey Girl was one of his best – a genuinely moving homage to John Hughes with some of the best performances he’s had in any of his films.

Where I get strange is: I really felt like he dropped the ball when it came to Zack & Miri Make a Porno …stepping on the heels of the Apatows that came before and producing something that, while it had its moments, felt distinctly un-Smith-like. At the same time, however, I’ve found myself enjoying the heck out of the even more culturally insignificant SModcast that he produces… and even all the spin-offs thereof (Tell ‘Em Steve-Dave, Mo & Glo, and Highlands: A Peephole History).

That long intro isn’t just to pad this review. It’s kind of there to clarify just how odd it was, then, that when I heard about Cop Out – the first movie Smith has directed that he didn’t write – my expectations weren’t entirely shot to pieces. At the risk of sounding like the kind of fanboy I really dislike… the more you appreciate Smith’s recent attitude and philosophy toward life that comes over in its purest form in his podcasts and tweets, the less inclined you’ll be to pick this movie apart for the relative waste of time it really is.

For me, it’s far from the great nod to old 80s actioners that I hoped for (the great Harold Faltermeyer of Top Gun and Beverley Hills Cop even does the score), but it still made me laugh a heck of a lot (Scott taunting Morgan in the car, Essman abbreviating her language in front of her son while waving a gun around, then cussing the heck out of the following scene; the aforementioned son’s altercation with Morgan that ends in the line I quoted above…), even when I watched it a second time to refresh my memory before writing this.

I’m told the Blu-ray’s “Maximum Comedy Mode” makes the movie an even more enjoyable experience, and I’ll be very tempted to get the disc just for that. I loved seeing Michelle Trachtenberg as Willis’ daughter and Jason Lee as the stepfather rivalling for her admiration, and there are nice little casting surprises elsewhere in the movie like Kevin Pollak, Seann William Scott and Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Susie Essman (being, as there, wonderfully shouty).

This is by no means to say the movie’s great. Kevin Smith is capable of far more than this and while it can be argued that maybe he’s simply peaked and has the right to enjoy making a simple movie like this, I simply don’t believe it. I hope either Red State or Hit Somebody (which he says will be his “greatest movie” and possibly last) outdo everything we’ve seen from him so far. But I can’t be too down on him… SModcast alone has given me hours of laughs over the last year or two, and in those Askewniverse films I genuinely believe he has probably already done quite enough.

The movie is not helped at all by Johnny Depp’s narration. Apparently he was brought in to simply redub the narration already in place by the film’s writer-director Tom DiCillo because first audiences found DiCillo’s reading too monotonous. Considering how disinterested Depp sounds in the final version, I dread to think how the first take was.

But to be perfectly honest, this for me is where the movie’s failings end (the silly “omg Mr Mojo Risin is an anagram of Jim Morrison” moment notwithstanding). While the fact remains that there’s little of actual information here that as a Doors fan I hadn’t known before, all the anecdotes, stories, controversies and of course the music, the footage they have gathered is almost without exception extraordinary to behold and despite the presentation and packaging we should really be grateful to see it in any form.

I also read that this was meant to be an “anti-Oliver Stone” take on The Doors story, as Stone’s ’91 movie apparently offended as many fans as it created (count me in the latter set). I have no idea what’s wrong with the Stone movie and would gladly stick it together with this and maybe one of the concert DVDs to a make a full night of Doors viewing in the future. It’d be even better if they just released the footage sans-narration on a special edition Blu-ray, though. You should find this more than worth your time if you have anything more than a passing interest in music of the time.

1. Kick-Ass
2. Toy Story 3
3. Hot Tub Time Machine
4. Edge of Darkness
5. The Crazies
6. The Wolfman
7. Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars
8. The Runaways
9. Green Zone
10. Shutter Island
11. Alice in Wonderland

It’s kind of crazy to think that I’ve now seen every part of this trilogy in the cinema and even when I saw the first one, I wasn’t exactly a kid at 15. I remember taking my sister to see it, I remember loving the music (I was into all Disney music bigtime at the time) but probably more than anything revelling in the sheer hi-techery of the whole thing (“the whole movie was made on a computer!!”)

When Toy Story 2 was released, I forget what level of anticipation I really had for it. I was in the middle of college and pretty much high on Disney after Tarzan (I’d end up doing my final dissertation on Disney). What I remember is badly wanting my own Jessie doll after the movie, her story being the one that really resonated most with me.

I saw the first part again when it was re-released in 3D… part two never made it to our cinema in that form, or I just missed it, but these are movies that are always fresh in my mind. The 3D worked, I thought, pretty well in that re-release, but more than anything it was just awesome to see it on a huge screen again, and projected digitally. It felt strangely pure or something (as opposed to, say, a 70mm oldie being projected digitally).

I didn’t necessarily doubt this installment would be as great as people were saying (I’d seen the trailer and it really boded well on the emotional front). But having recently seen that first one and once again realise just how perfect it is, on top of the wonders that Pixar have given us even in the 11 years since part 2, I didn’t put my expectations too high.

Well I’ve seen Toy Story 3 twice now… first in a dodgy download version because I simply needed to see it before I read too much about it and spoiled it for myself. I trusted, as I always do, that if the movie was as good as people were saying, the quality of the presentation would not make a huge difference to the story, and I wasn’t wrong. Like many people, I bawled not just like a baby but like someone with serious mental problems LOL.

This movie has some serious emotional weight, like the most recent of Pixar’s productions Wall•E and Up. What’s different here, however, is how those emotions are spread throughout the picture. There are two intense emotional beats towards the end of the movie, but the melancholic undertones are there right from the moment (after a “fantasy” opening similar to the way the first two movies open) we re-enter Andy’s bedroom, through the POV of his mom holding a video camera.

I won’t talk about those two parts at the end, except to say that they worked just as well on my flat laptop screen as they did in enormous 3D. My opinion of 3D remains the same as I think I’ve said before, and it’s just exactly the same as my opinion of seeing movies on the big screen in general. It’s always nice to see movies larger than life, but it’s simply not always possible. Almost all of us have more favourite movies that we’ve never seen on the big screen than ones that we have, so I’m pretty sure we can all agree that if a movie is good enough it doesn’t necessarily need a big screen projection. It’s nice, it adds to the experience, it immerses you more, but it doesn’t change the quality of the film.

I’m still only giving the movie 4 hearts right now because I’m remembering the original and how absolutely perfect that was right down to the screenplay structure etc, and I feel like to a certain extent those massive emotional punches at the end throw this instalment off-balance in a similar way to those last two Pixar productions I mentioned (though by nowhere near as much… plus they made me cry a lot more). I’m in near total agreement however with those calling the trilogy as it stands one of the best trilogies of all time. The consistency over 15 years really is incredible, not to mention the sheer uniqueness of this world… and while I’ve really focussed like everyone else on the huge emotional impact of this one, it has just as much excitement, humour, thrills and invention as the others.

I wanted to say something about Jessie but I can’t find anywhere above to slip it in lol. Like I said I had a huge crush on Jessie after the second movie, and she had the big emotional moment of that movie that really made me love it most, in her backstory with Emily (cleverly echoed here in Lotso’s story; though Lotso of course reacts very differently to being left behind). I had actually almost forgotten how much I loved her so much that she wasn’t even a factor in my excitement about seeing part 3. Then she appeared and I just fell in love all over again. There’s more made of the funny relationship between her and Buzz that began in the second movie, and in the midst of this are some insanely stylised, romantically-lit shots of her that just wowed me. It’s her face that really carries the first of those aforementioned emotional punches at the end and all I need to do is recall that face and her hand reaching out to start crying all over again. This is a wonderful, wonderful addition to a practically perfect series of movies. But you know that already.

Oh yes: another extra thing to mention as I won’t write it anywhere else… moreso for me than the 3D among reasons to see this movie on the big screen is the short that precedes it. I always forget that Pixar put these shorts before all their features and this one like so many of them is so great it threatens to supplant the memory of the movie. It’s called “Day & Night” and combines 2D and 3D animation in an ingenious way that really can’t be described well to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It’s about conflicting ideas and perspectives from the broadest scale to the most specific (you could argue it’s simply about the co-existence of 2D and 3D cinema). It has insane technique and a great message in the perfect balance that the best of Pixar has to offer. I’ll be very disappointed if it isn’t at least nominated for an Oscar next year (likewise, of course, the feature it precedes!)

I’m kinda-sorta sure I may have seen the first of these at least before, but my early Doctor Who experiences are a major blur and the imagery so iconic across the board that I could really be remembering anything. Both these movies are remakes of existing stories in the Hartnell years, but from the very title music and credit design, you know the approach is gonna be different. The Doctor is painted here as a much more fun and contemporary character than he was in the early years of the TV series, if only through the way he’s presented (Peter Cushing’s actual performance is beautifully refined as ever).

You’ll find way better informed views on why the TV versions of these stories were ideologically better than these lavish remakes all over the net, and that’s why I decided to blend these two movies into just one review here. What will bring me back personally to watch both movies again is two-fold… firstly, that very lavishness in the design. Early Doctor Who on the TV was adventurous but because of the sheer number of episodes frequently came out wobbly, cheap, even to the point of line-fluffage from the actors. There’s none of that here, and the sets, effects etc are simply beautiful.

Secondly, and more importantly, there’s Roberta Tovey. I love that they make The Doctor’s granddaughter so much younger here. There’s something just plain more aesthetically satisfying about Susan being genuinely precocious, not to mention her physical size, in these environments. She’s far more convincing as “An Unearthly Child” for me than the teenaged Carole Ann Ford (though fine in her own way) ever was in the TV series, and her presence just makes the whole thing a little more fun. If I ever did see either of these when I was younger, there’s no doubt I related most immediately to her, and I’m not sure if anything’s changed

In short, these movies aren’t exactly essential viewing for anyone be they film-lovers, modern Who-fans or passing sci-fi geeks. But if you’re just a little of all the above, they are worth a look. For the time they were made they have crazy production values and Cushing makes for a Doctor so good (if, as I said, you can ignore the presentation) that you almost wish there was more.

I write what I feel on this site, I wouldn’t even bother if I didn’t, so if you know me you’ll know my apprehension about Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon; even if both have done good work on their own, their most popular efforts have been far from their best and sue me if I call it out when great people pander to the crowd. But to my joy this is one of those rare movies that kinda had me at hello. I’m on something of a “calling bullshit” kick lately, goodness knows why, and after a strong opening with way over-the-top incidental score and less nauseating shaky-cam than usual from Paul Greengrass, comes a scene with Matt Damon’s simply calling such bullshit on the search for WMDs that basically made everything that followed fine by me.

The plot’s more complicated in the end than I’d dare to summarise, and I’m often not good with overcomplicated plots where they’re not needed, but it kinda didn’t matter to me here. I did lose interest and it did outstay its welcome, but I felt perfectly able to dip back into the aspect of the movie that initially hooked me quite easily. It’s one of Matt Damon’s more tolerable performances (and for the record I’d limit those previous of his that fully come into this category to the Kevin Smith stuff and The Talented Mr. Ripley) and being Paul Greengrass the tech side is flawless. It’s clearly no Hurt Locker and clearly doesn’t aspire to be. Some will say it oversimplifies what it’s trying to say about this war. I say, relative to most stuff gracing the multiplexes nowadays, at least it has something that needs to be simplified.