This one is a really interesting experience. I’ve been looking forward to it for AnnaSophia Robb but the rest of the cast ain’t too shabby either. Charlize Theron is fantastic in her short bit of screentime, in fact when she left the movie so early I was a little disappointed as, it has to be said, it’s not one of AnnaSophia’s most memorable or brilliant performances – at least in those early scenes. Nick Stahl and Woody Harrelson, too, are great.

But for almost a full half of the running time, it’s not much to write home about at all. It’s very melancholy, very downbeat, for the most part perfectly played by the actors and crew etc – but, kinda like The Wackness, it’s the kind of small movie that’s been done a thousand times before and at least a handful of those thousand times were miles better.

It’s when Nick Stahl and AnnaSophia hit the road to find Theron, however, that the movie really switched gears for me. There are some really beautiful moments in the second half of the movie – it’s almost the inverse of Robb’s performance in Have Dreams Will Travel – that disappointment I had in her performance early on pays off as her character finds herself on the road, playing hide and seek with Stahl, that almost iconic image of her that graces the movie’s poster, a scene in which she grabs the attention of two pre-teen boys by smoking and then rollerskating to the edge of a diving board before jumping in the water – it’s one of those stories about a young girl discovering to her surprise the things that she can do and the power that she has; and no matter how average the rest of the movie is, moments like that in movies always mean a lot to me.

When the third pleasant surprise in the cast – Dennis Hopper – shows up, it almost begins to feel like True Romance ... and then things get really squiffy. If it weren’t for the cast and the skill with which its all done, I wouldn’t hesitate to call this movie a mess – in fact, I still wanna call it a mess. But it has just enough in it, for me at least, to keep it floating gently.

“Charlotte has pudding in her Prada …”

Umm, yes, excuse me where’s my award? I actually watched it. LOL. Oh you ain’t heard nothin’ yet …

I didn’t realise while watching Mamma Mia and being swept away even more there than I imagined I might be (which was a lot) that it might need to become a new term for cinematic surprise. For – and I hope this significantly shocks anyone who knows me – I was most definitely Mamma Mia’d by this movie.

I never had any interest in the TV series – I’ve probably watched at most a third of three separate episodes, never making it beyond an ad break, lol. But I’m not a woman (not the kind “They” talk about, anyways …) or a gay man so that’s the way it should be, right? The movie sets up most things however, even while really even that wouldn’t be necessary because SATC is just one of those things you know of even if you avoided it like the plague for the last 10 years. It still surprised me how well the movie stands alone to a relative newcomer.

I still find it shallow – yes, even when, as I’m told, that means I’m “not getting it”. I get it. But call it principals, call it whatever you want, I decided a long time ago that I would never fall to the ease of telling jokes based on bad feeling, insult humour and the like – that line in West Side Story always resonated with me when Tony and Maria first meet and he asks if she’s making a joke by giving him the time of day, and she replies, “I’ve not yet learned to joke that way; I think now I never will.” And that’s me. So I don’t find much of these kinds of comedy amusing in the slightest even while I understand how most people do because it’s easier than taking that miserably honest stand. I could go on and on about such things as the image of the little girl surrounded by girl talk and repeating everything they say and why such rituals are the reason all these gender stereotypes perpetuate and over time become acceptable and so on and so on … but surprisingly, these weren’t my overriding thoughts while watching the movie. Like I said, there was a point at which these thoughts simply got Mamma Mia’d to one side LOL.

I think it was Mark Kermode initially (but I think a lot of people came running to his side and I assumed I’d be there with them when I ultimately watched the movie) who said the movie is just as shallow as ever and nothing more than a parade of labels etc devoid of meaning. Sure enough you get in the first hour what amounts to a filmed photoshoot of various designer wedding dresses and a parade of name dropping and product placement. But in the end I truly have to question exacty where those who can call a movie shallow that ends in the line, “dressed head to toe in Love – the only label that never goes out of style,” came to that conclusion.

For it’s in the second hour where the movie becomes what I kind of hoped it might’ve been but never once thought it would be. It’s kinda like Clerks II, the ten years later thing; “can we keep this act going like we used to? Yes, no, maybe?” It’s like what I wanted from Bratz which, though I loved it still, could’ve been just that little bit more questioning of the little things that are perhaps “wrong” about Bratz dolls. This movie shows the SATC girls’ tried and true lifestyles falling apart just a little with age. There are moments with each of them where they look downright hideous on the screen, and that’s okay. It really does go hand and hand with Mamma Mia in showing that there’s life after youth afterall.

Yep, I’m as shocked as you are. It’s far from the worst movie of the year. I laughed more than once; I cried more than once. I cried over a handbag LOL. But it’s what that handbag (err, purse) means in that moment, being given to someone who isn’t always clad in labels, that makes you cry. When Sarah Jessica Parker says, “it was the best money I ever spent” it’s got nothing to do with Louis Vuitton. This movie really does have something to say, and it really deserves a lot more effort to understand than most critics have given it – it’s their job afterall, if you ask me. Kermode asked listeners to write in to the Five Live show with their credentials and stuff, like in an effort to find intelligent people who saw this movie and enjoyed it. Well, I could mention my degree – whoops, I just did – but I’m still not as smart as he is when it comes to talking and writing about movies. I know that there’s something in this movie that’s worthwhile, but I’ve probably failed miserably at conveying that … but it’s not my job; I would love if someone like him could see this movie the way I saw it and talk about it. ‘Cos all I can really say about it is I loved it.

Jennifer Hudson and the little “sex!” girl were awesome too (and that’s really saying something about the little girl after that “coloring” scene was played to death in the promotional run-up to the movie’s release), I just realised I forgot to mention them.

I may have only seen this once since the first time seeing it on the big screen, and I really don’t know why but for its sheer length and weight for what, at a first glance, seems like a relatively simple and almost corny tale to tell (I mean: it’s literally about “getting back in the saddle”, lol …)

I’ve written about how much I love the girl and horse subgenre, possibly more than any other kind of movie, and what I realised to my surprise watching this one this time is, it might be the best of the bunch, because of the huge void it places between the girl and the horse that only makes their bond more beautiful in the end. It might sound silly that I’d forget such a thing, but I’d forgotten just how much the horse features here. I remembered the horror of the accident at the start, but I forgot about the central part of the set-up which is that this movie is about two desperately wounded and broken creatures (“Who’s ever gonna want me like this??”) finding their feet again.

It’s one of those movies that is all about a person trying not to cry, and finally finding the moment where they find they can. It’s interesting that the episode of This American Life I listened to last night had a sorta-similar story to that of Grace here feeling responsible for her friend Judith’s death. It doesn’t get much more painful than that feeling, I think; that old cliché, “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault.” Some clichés are clichés ‘cos they work.

“We need to show Pilgrim how to help you get on. ‘cos y’see, there’s a point where neither of you is gonna need me anymore. And we’re there. I’m not asking.”

Then there’s the other characters. I love how communication (or the lack thereof; or even the transcendence over the verbal kind) is conveyed in the movie. At times even the humans appear somewhat horselike and animal in their behaviours to one another, it reminds me of the shrieking towards the end of The Birds when certain characters almost seem to be becoming avian. I haven’t read the novel but I imagine that the great chunks of silence here are explained by way of beautifully descriptive inner monologues etc. Rather than try and fill those out in dialogue or cut them entirely, the screenwriter and then Redford choose to simply allow those silences to speak for themselves, the camera lingering on a glare, a stare, a turn of the head slowed down by doubleframing. It’s a huge reason why the movie winds up so long but I think it’s wonderful that Redford had the liberty to do that. As anyone who knows me will know, I’m all about silences; I couldn’t possibly hold this movie’s use of them against it.

If nothing else, it also happens in my opinion to be by far the best work Scarlett Johansson has ever done. It’s really like the book, the movie, the character were made for her.

Weird how I hadn’t seen this one yet. I thought (particularly after the super-obscure Cathy’s Curse) I pretty much knew where all the devil children were I have to admit I was a little disappointed first when I realised Brooke Shields wasn’t the Alice of the title and then when I saw her vanish entirely from the cast within about 15 minutes of the runtime, lol; but it didn’t deter me too much from sticking with it. Shields’ performance has nothing on, say, her work in Pretty Baby a couple of years later, but really none of the performances here are particularly noteworthy – though there’s something particularly haunting about the face of the girl who does play Alice, I’m sure Brooke would’ve done just as serviceable a job.

It’s kind of like Don’t Look Now meets Mystic River at the start, with a tone similar to Mommie Dearest (but maybe that’s just the deceptively innocent sounding title working its incidious charm, hehe). In the end it’s one of those 70s horror movies that “just works” despite its flaws, and I could’ve pretty confidently told you as much before even putting it on. I know that I say that often, but somehow I can’t help it. It’ll be interesting in 20 or 30 years to see if people 20 or 30 years younger than me start saying the same of the crappy teen “horrors” of this decade, that’ll be a real noodlebaker, but for now, I can just repeat what I’ve said before, that though the technical stuff was often sprayed on the wall like so many guts in these productions, they really knew how to up the freakout factor and haunt you, be it with music, images, blood, or sound.

As I said the performances are lacking – it’d be easy to call the whole production frankly shocking, in fact. But such is the story that I’d prefer to call it abysmally stylised. Like Happy Birthday to Me, Bloody Birthday, the Slumber Party and Sleepover Camp movies, I’m even willing to give Black Christmas another shot … it was more worth my time than a lot of things lately.

It seemed a little crazy of me to watch this following two ‘08 movies I’d actually had a little hope for (yes, even Prom Night) and been let down so bad over. But, I don’t know, I never really stopped liking M. Night Shyamalan as some did – the furthest I drifted from him was over Unbreakable which I didn’t like at all on the first viewing. A second viewing remedied that entirely and I never entirely distrusted him since.

And you know what? After these 90 minutes, I’m still with him all the way. No – this movie is not terrifying as some people seem to have been led to expect, and if you go in with those expectations then, yes, you’re liable to wind up laughing. I’m guessing this is bad marketing – I don’t know because I don’t put myself in the position to be overexposed to such things. But if you do want to talk about the fear factor of this director’s movies, then at least compare it to Lady in the Water and The Village (two of the movies not oh-so-subtly mentioned on the poster tagline, lol) and realise, in this department at least, it’s still a slight return to form (if you like such phrases). I found the opening immediately arresting, the later scenes like with John Leguizamo and the two boys truly nightmarish, Zooey Deschanel of course stunning (what on earth are those eyes made of? lol) and the ending really quite moving.

It’s hokey and wobbly sometimes, but, y’know, I’m willing to trust that none of this is entirely unintended. Shyamalan’s shown so many times that he’s clearly a Hitchcock fan and so many of the moments particularly in this movie feel a lot more like the master of suspense’s frequent tongue-in-cheek moments than just a hack who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Whether that’s true or not, it still works for me better than the gigantic pile of crap I’ve had to expose my retinas to so far this year.

I’m up for just about any horror movie, even the recent teenage remakes that can’t even manage to be gory enough to get a scary rating, lol; and from what I’d heard of this one, I was even more excited than usual. When Jena Malone’s name appeared in the opening credits, wow. This has a familiar set-up and story in the end, but its real selling point that, yes, it’s proper scary, proper nasty, to the point where I almost actually had to look away in places, all that cracking bone etc. Jena Malone is absolutely fantastic throughout, and as a horror movie in this day and age … you just couldn’t hope for more. Short review, but hey, it’s a simple movie

“He’s altogether lovable
But he’ll always be a two-bit punk
So he’ll never be my beloved.
What a shame.”

Parts of this almost provoke the same reaction I sometimes have to parts of Leon, the boyish gangsterry action dialogue etc. There’s something almost frighteningly misogynistic about it that seems to strike me more each time I watch it and kinda makes the fact it’s regarded so much as a classic without this element being raised for discussion so much just a little unnerving. I still find the rape towards the end physically impossible to watch in its entirety. But it’s not just that scene – an earlier scene, possibly a couple, show women clearly enjoying the sickening treatment they’re subjected to à la Straw Dogs – right at the start a minor character seems far more aroused than frightened by the cold touch of a gun on her nipple.

There are hints throughout that all this is just a character thing and that I probably shouldn’t be so bugged by it – I love Robert De Niro’s line when he gets re-acquainted with a girl they rape while robbing a bank. She comes on to him personally, but he turns her down, adding, “Besides if I gave you a good crack in the mouth I’m afraid you’d probably like it.” I mean, there are women like this in the world, sad but true, it reminds me of that, “What is it with women like you?” scene in Pay it Forward. But I don’t know, these moments still don’t sit entirely right with me. It’s just an issue of balance, I think.

On which point, of course, there’s Deborah. Played so memorably at first by Jennifer Connolly first as the girl Noodles will never have, though she certainly wants him her sights are set so high on her future. That line above, that whole monologue, it’s like over half the movie to me, a little like Estella’s treatment of Pip in Great Expectations, how many young relationships go this way, “I like you. But you smell,” etc (oversimplified perhaps but you get the gist). Later she’s played even more beautifully by Elizabeth McGovern, the slight European twinge to her accent distancing her from the grown Noodles even more, “Where’d you learn all that parlez-vous stuff?” he asks her when they finally go on a date towards the end – the most beautiful scene imaginable made almost as unwatchable as what follows when you know where the evening leads. In that awful scene in the car, she’s not only losing her dignity, possibly even her virginity; she’s losing him, any idea of his good side she has slips away forever. He becomes just the two-bit punk to her, and I find that the most crushing part of the movie, that finality of a stupid action in determining where a friendship or even love will go or terminate (yeh, I guess it goes without saying – I’ve been there – not as severe but I’ve definitely been stupid, who hasn’t?).

Anyway, even despite my discomfort, it is a true masterpiece, I wish I had the time to write a much longer and better review than this. All cut versions of the movie should be destroyed – really, do yourself a favour and see the 4 hour cut (I think by now that’s the more easily available version anyway but it still needs signposting lol). I’ve literally only focussed on the Deborah and Noodles thread here because it’s the part that pierced my heart the very first time I saw it and that stuck with me all these years. But there’s so much more. The Charlotte Russe scene, the Clockwork Orange styled baby swap, Danny Aiello’s wonderful turn as the police chief (called Aiello, LOL) they give it up the ass to, lol. It’s perfect.

I really cringed at the start of this, I’d been looking forward to it ever since mid-May when I started reading the two books by Lewis Carroll and it happened to be on TV early one morning. I decided to save it till I’d actually finished the second book, though. First of all, obviously, Kate Beckinsale at 25 is way too old to be Alice. But that in itself didn’t worry me – I loved, for example, Fiona Fullerton in the Seventies version of the first book (okay, she wasn’t quite so much older, but she was still no pre-teen). What made me cringe is that she’s presented here at first as a mother reading the Looking Glass story to her daughter (who, incidentally, is far more suited to the Alice role though you don’t really get a great sense of her acting ability).

But despite the inexplicable bookending (which, I’ve gotta say, even that’s saved by Beckinsale calling the little girl “Humpty” in the end like Alice in the book calls Dinah, though it doesn’t have the same tight connection to Humpty’s line about looking upon a King, re: “a cat may look at a King” from the first book – sorry, can you tell I’ve been reading the annotated version much? lol), and despite the at times awfully cheap and shaky TV production values, this is stunningly faithful to the text – in fact to the point where I genuinely wonder who it was made for. Virtually none of the nonsense and talk is diluted, and it’s a kind of blessing and curse at the same time.

But whether I enjoyed it or not (the jury may still be out), it still deserves a lot of respect – and that it even ends on that mesmerising acrostic (“A boat beneath a sunny sky … Still she haunts me phantomwise … In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die … life, what is it but a dream?” – I’m absolutely crazy about this poem right now), read alternately by Beckinsale and the little girl, really almost made me want to go and read the book again.