#906 – Lone Survivor

There is only one way to describe Lone Survivor, it’s war porn. It is as if someone has recreated Call Of Duty in live action, just for all the armchair, one man army fantasists out there. And the result is superb, I was hooked.

Then you start thinking about the problematic nature of this. This is a true story about real people dying, real people being decapitated. It’s a fact that hits hard with the photographic montages of those real people bookend-ing the film. Cynicism could block all this out quite easily, but I don’t think it should, it’s a cheap way out. However, I’d feel far more comfortable if this movie had been pure fiction… The question then would be, would it still grip me? Would I still be so engrossed as to be ducking Taliban bullets pinging off my cover of rocks?

Finally a mention on the gore effects and immediacy created in the shooting choices, exceptional. Those sequences where they’re tumbling down the hillside are so well crafted as to make a viewer wince at every bounce, bump and scrape. You feel them.

#796 – Prince Avalanche

There is in Prince Avalanche a beauty. It comes mostly from the setting, but also the quiet contemplation of it all. It’s almost as if the four characters are ghostly inhabitants of the isolated scene they inhabit.

Emile and Paul capture a sense of renewal and rebirth and recognition in a location that does the same. And it’s created without grandeur too, there is no glib philosophising. In this movie there is only a pleasant and restful harmony.

#607 – Killer Joe

Killer Joe is good, firmly in the renaissance of Matthew McConaughey stable. However it is also totally and utterly fucked up. Which is kind of why it’s good, but let’s class it as not a date movie. Though if your girlfriend is a fan of a fried chicken leg, go ahead knock yourself out.

#190 – The Girl Next Door

If being a pornographer was this easy, I’d have cracked it a long time ago. Despite it’s premise The Girl Next Door isn’t actually the abortion you might expect.

#163 – Milk

Milk is brilliant, due to the importance placed on the story the film is telling, something that is carried skillfully buy Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch and the amazing sense of an era that is conjured from every single scene – the wardrobe is phenomenal!

#104 – Speed Racer

Speed Racer is fucking Wachowski to its neon core, there is more green screen and style than should be allowed to fit inside a film as viewers eyes flounder and drown in an inspired mix of colour, blur and vibration dealt to the optic nerve in overdose proportions – it is ridiculous as it is orgasmic for spectrum starved peepers – believe me, after watching this you’ll realise you peepers have been fed a pale and tepid diet of the pastel and pallid for far too long.