He's an angry elf.

Elf (2003)

Chosen by me. God knows why?

I get I'm not the target audience for this film but seriously it's just so lazy in it's supposedly heart warming Christmas-time message.
James Caan, looking bored throughout, turns from arsehole to hero pop for absolutely no reason what so-ever. Zooey Deschanel dates the unstable Will Ferrel because... who the fuck knows (biggest laugh of the film - her saying she won't sing)?
Most of the jokes seem to involve two people saying 'yes it is' and 'no it isn't' to each other.
Sloppy, mostly charmless and loud.
Still it's much better than Santa Claus: The Movie I guess.

Names is for tombstones, baby!

Live and Let Die (1973)

Chosen by blogalongabond

Bond's Intro: No Bond before the credits, to perhaps ease us into the plot before once more asking where is Connery? The pre-credits are fun but daft (I like to believe the guy at the UN is killed by a spike coming out of the headphones which makes about as much sense as a silly sonic noise thingagmy doodad).
Bond's actual intro is both quietly confidant and pretty fucking awful. I like how it just gets on with the business of it being Moore now, no cutesy self-referential messing around. M comes into his apartment and says 'hello 007'. That's it job done. However this means it is not at all iconic. 
And then there's the matter of James Bond's flat. Oh dear. Just horrid. I still have waking nightmares about that kitchen. And the monogramed dressing gown. The horror, the horror.


Theme Song and Credits: A doozy of a tune (even if the word 'in' seems to be used far too much) but the usual shaved cooch and perky nipples which doesn't seem to make much of a potentially interesting tarot theme.

The Ladies: The standard is pretty high looks wise (but then it very rarely isn't so seems a bit of a redundancy). Jane Seymour is stunning though a bit dull (her direction appears to mostly have consisted of "Jane, Jane, arch your back some more") and Gloria Hendry is fun (though terribly written - we will get some more supposedly intelligent women acting like idiots with next month's Britt Eklund).

The Baddies: Not for the first, or last, time do we get a great, interesting actor playing a not so great villain. Yaphet Kotto is terrific but doesn't really do all that much. There's an interesting assortment of henchmen though. Tee Hee has a cool hook, Whisper is just the right side of odd and has a gadgeted out pimpmobile and then there is the distinctive Baron Samedi performed brilliantly by Geoffrey Holder. Though he and the whole tarot gimmick sit very strangely in Bond's world.


License to Kill: Again it is a while before Bond really gets any action, where he fights a couple of thugs and runs away. Like Dr. No the first kill is not human. A snake taking place of a spider. Interestingly (or not) when watching this on ITV many years ago the cut out the bit where he actually kills it (presumably to stop kids getting the idea of using cigars and spray aftershave to burn things) so he appeared to just let Rosie Carver enter the bathroom to face the deadly creature (and made the line "Oh, a snake. I forgot, I should have told you. You should never go in there without a mongoose." even creepier)

Bond hates foreigners: Bond's treatment of African-Americans is far fairer than the films. He seems fairly colour blind and happily fucks italian, african-american and virgin american.
The movie however is slightly troubling. Just about every black person seems in league with the bad guys (or simply happy to see people killed off in front of them). Taxi drivers, shoe shiners, men on the street all pay respect to Mr. Big ("You got a honky on your tail").
We do have one character who is working for the good guys but he is of course killed off (though it's hard to claim that as racially motivated because Bond's compatriots do have a habit of dying no matter the colour of their skin).


Bond hates women: He's pretty horrid towards Rosie Carver ("Like I was saying a lousy agent but the compensations speak for themselves", "I certainly wouldn't have killed you before" - good to know necrophillia is not one of Bond's quirks) but his treatment of Solitaire really is hard to defend. Slipping her the equivalent of a supernatural roofie it's difficult not to see his taking of her virginity as anything but rape (especially when you think of him chuckling to himself as he buys 30 odd packs of tarot cards and takes the lover out of each one to create the trick deck).

Bond's crazy knowledge: Not much really on crocs all he offers is "Oh, I've always tried to keep them at arms length"

Bond's a big fat snob: "I liked Baines. We had the same bootmaker"

00's killed: A bunch of agents at the start. Baines seemed to be doing the same job as 007 but may not have been 00 material really.

Mini overview: There's some pretty good stuff here like a mostly fun boat chase with some great stunts but it suffers from it's modishness more than the sixties efforts (I like the bit where Moore seemingly glides in to Solitaires house on his gigantic shirt collar) and continues to highlight the crappier bits of the last few movies (I loved the jokes and silliness as a kid but they grate now)

Bond never mentions that the back of the cards have his number on but in a movie with men who can't be killed and psychic ladies it's not so strange I guess.

From what I hear she pursued it in all directions.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Chosen by Emma Jones who had this to say: 'Strangers on a Train ended up being one of the last Hitchcock films I saw. This was mainly due to the fact it is hardly shown on TV and this was a time when buying videos of films was both rare and expensive. I would pan through the films section of the Radio Times every week in the hope of catching a Hitchcock film to add to my recorded collection. I was in the end rewarded for my patience and collected my gem on an obscure week night (paranoid that my Dad had set the video wrong I sneaked downstairs to check the player was whirring and had the red record button lit). I thoroughly enjoyed the film, made even sweeter by the wait. It is a truly original thriller, with a story line that has been copied in films and even sitcoms. Farley Granger hardly made any films due to his untimely death and his two Hitchcock outings (Rope being his other) are by far his best. There are no weak links in the casting and a gripping scene that makes you think twice about going on a carousel!'

Massively influential (filmaday has already covered one film out this year based on this premise) but still gripping and tense.
Hitchcock is clearly a master at these games, there are many iconic images (Bruno staring ahead as everyone else looks side to side at a tennis match is a simple but unsettling image) amidst the silliness nessecary to ratchett up the tension (oh he just happens to drop the all important lighter down a drain - how convenient!).
Patricia Hitchcock is delightful as the younger daughter of a senator who seems pretty keyed in to the reality of the situation.

What you want me to say is, 'I love you'. Well I don't. I hate you, you little slut...

Brighton Rock chosen by Emma Jones who had this to say: 'This version of Brighton Rock is one of those rare films that doesn't let the novel down (mainly I suppose because Greene wrote the screenplay himself). I was first attracted to it through my love of all things Graham Greene (though I must admit I prefer Our Man in Havana and The End of The Affair). It is fast-paced, well-acted and showcases the wonderful Richard Attenborough's talents as the sadistic 'Pinkie'. The only thing that lets the film down is the ending which is softened by a ray of hope in the final scenes - the very opposite to the novel. Even with that in mind it is still an excellent film that trial blazes the path for all the angry young things who follow.'

I still haven't read the novel since reviewing the recent version (here), but a lot of my feelings towards that film apply here. Rose is still too slight a character and the plot hinges too many times on Brighton being a very small town. Pinkie too is still under served by the script but Attenborough's intense glowering performance makes up for it. The recording he makes still one of the more brutal things I have seen in film and the element of 'miracle' at the films climax a saving grace from wallowing in too much misery.

Behold and despair

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Chosen by me because I like to go to the cinema a lot.

The kind of slickly made shit that can make going to the cinema tiresome at times (I'm not one of those people who'll say 'i'll never get those two hours of my life back' because let's face it what the hell else would I do with those hours?). Jut completely lacking in any passion for pulp storytelling it goes through the motions (oh yawn yet more dreary father issues) attempting to rouse you from slumber with spurts of blood and an incredibly loud, but not very interesting, soundtrack (and at the screening I was at failed even to do this as one man a couple of seats away fell asleep and was snorring quite soundly toward the end of the movie).
And what we really want to see in a Conan movie is of course an interminable time with him as a kid. Fucking Spider-man. Becomes one of the biggest movies and now everything has to have a long winded, ever so dull 'origin'. Ron Perlman is always a delight but even he can't save a seriously stupid birth scene (my second for this blog the past week) from overwrought pointlessness.
Nobody here comes out looking good. Momoa is ok but given such leaden dialogue and dull stuff to do.
Nispel directs this fantasy realm exactly as if it were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and fails to inject any personality or fun into proceedings.

Turn Round

The Skin I live In (2011)

Chosen by me as I like to go to the cinema a lot and love Almodovar's films.

Another terrific, challenging movie from Pedro (slightly pretentiously credited as just Almodovar at the beginning).
Banderas is absolutely electrifying as the Frankenstein-esque Doctor, never losing a certain sympathy for his revenge tactics (even as we the audience find out something he doesn't know that places his actions in an even worse light).
Subtle yet powerful, the end is played at a whisper, with just two words that cuts before the more melodramatic moment is shown and leaves a strange, haunting quality that stays with you long after leaving the cinema.

And for you Blunted... the balls

Apocalypto (2006)

Chosen by Wendy (kinda - I doubt she reads this but a few years ago I won it in a raffle at a Serenity screening she had organised).

Back before he popularised the term 'sugar tits' Gibson was mostly thought to be a bit strange for mounting this - a two hour sub-titled film with no known actors.
It's a fairly peculiar beast, competent in it's own way with a very straight forward chase narrative but also a tad cliche and second hand.
In fact, for all the oddness in language and cast the film feels so familiar in it's beats (though it manages a crazy moment or two including perhaps the silliest birth scene ever unless someone decides to adapt Stephen King's The breathing Method) that it's actually sort of dull.