Blog Profile / Zettel Film Reviews
| URL : | http://www.zettelfilmreviews.co.uk/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Film / Film Reviews | |
| Posts on Regator: | 527 | |
| Posts / Week: | 2.1 | |
| Archived Since: | August 9, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Star Trek – Into Darkness: Eyebrows going where no eyebrows have been before
Tweet Star Trek Into Darkness – J J Abrams Eyebrows boldly going where no eyebrows have been before. Deliciously the Latin for eyebrows is supercilia: and there is much superciliasness in STID. Chris Pine’s young Jimbo Kirk sports Healeyesque bushy beetle brackets in an archly arcing style of bifurcated unibrow. Spock’s (Zachary Quinto) perfectly [...]
The Apprentice BBC – Men and Women behaving badly to make money and make us laugh
Tweet The Apprentice (1) – Mission (sadly) Possible “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to scour the land to find: irreducible egotists with a delusional conviction of their superior abilities and talent, devoid of any objective evidence to justify it and which is disproved by every self-aggrandising word that escapes [...]
The Place Behind The Pines – David Cianfrance. Tatty Tats and dumb drama
Tweet The Place Behind The Pines – David Cianfrance The paradoxes of cool. If you think you are – you aren’t. If you try to be – you won’t be. Worst of all: if everyone tells you are and you believe them – you never could or will be. Cool is impossible to define: [...]
Trance – Who’s Who and What’s What Mind games with Danny Boyle
Tweet Trance – Danny Boyle Not all banknotes can be forgeries. A forgery can only be passed off as real against the background of a viable currency which requires that most notes in circulation are genuine. Much the same logical limitation applies to the central dramatic device that lies at the heart of the [...]
To The Wonder – Terrence Malik, Joyous, intimate but flawed
Tweet To The Wonder – Terrence Malik Joyous. Intimate. Unsettling, Sobering. Thought-provoking. Cinematically masterly: cinematography, editing, musical score. And a mesmerising performance by Olga Kurylenko. For all the graphic sex that has become an unremarkable, unremarked norm in modern movies, true intimacy is rare. Show More Summary
Oscars Postscript – Zettel. Don’t miss Sugarman
Tweet Oscars Postscript – Zettel There was a pivotal moment, totally unremarked in this marathon, 3-hour Feast of Narcissus. A geeky little Swedish Director and a chubby American Producer picked up the Swede’s first and the American’s second, Oscar. Malik Bendjelloul’s English did not survive his excitement and the tiny delay that ensued led [...]
Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino
Tweet Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino Django contains the many strengths and several weaknesses of Quentin Tarantino. As with all his best movies, he takes a well-established generic form, here the Western, and develops its elements to farce; to absurdity; even finally to destruction. With scabrous dialogue, scandalous amorality and an almost childish determination [...]
A Good Day To Die Hard – John Moore – a franchise as dead as Python’s parrot
Tweet A Good Day To Die Hard - John Moore Don’t. No, seriously – don’t. At last I can shed my secret shame – I’ve always enjoyed most of the Die Hard series. But this latest crass, meritless, ear-splitting drivel finally emancipates me from this affliction. I like trashy films; good trashy films: [...]
Zero Dark Thirty – Kathryn Bigelow. The assassination of a terrorist
Tweet Zero Dark Thirty – Kathryn Bigelow Lincoln could be described as portraying the unprincipled pursuit of a principled objective, in conflict with the principled pursuit of an unprincipled end. It is a tragic lesson of history that when old men possessed of power talk with passion about principles – young people die. No [...]
Hitchcock – Sacha Gervasi. Cinema’s master craftsman revealed
Tweet Hitchcock – Sacha Gervasi I’ve always thought of Alfred Hitchcock as the master craftsman of cinema: meticulous in preparation, rigorous in execution and always controlled. His films seldom strayed outside the generic corridor of thriller, suspense or mystery. All demonstrate a respect for and careful control of story, character and plot. The [...]
Lincoln – Steven Spielberg. The past is another place….
Tweet Lincoln – Steven Spielberg “The past is another country. They do things differently there.” L P Hartley’s now almost proverbial opening lines of The Go-Between constantly resonated in the back of my mind throughout this powerful, accomplished, superbly acted film. With typical authority and characteristically meticulous attention to detail, Spielberg assembles to great [...]
Poem – The Visitor: Did you visit me dark angel…..
Tweet The Visitor Did you visit me dark angel did you whisper did you call do you come unbidden does my will do my choices make a difference to anything at all I am not my body I am not my brain and though these may become no more I shall still remain [...]
Les Miserables – Tom Hooper: Against all the odds – a triumph
Tweet Les Miserables – Tom Hooper Against all the odds – a triumph: of conception, execution, and performance. Hooper has taken perhaps the most iconic post-war, quintessentially theatrical stage musical; successful beyond all expectation and initial critical reaction, and captured its spirit in the radically different aesthetic form of film. The assurance [...]
Open Letter to President Obama – Inaugural debt of honour
Tweet St Albans, England – January 7th 2013 Dear Mr President, I need your help to recognise a deep wrong which we both share: you as an American and President; me as the descendant of English and European race and culture. Recognise not remedy, because the wrong in question is beyond remediation; one [...]
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Peter Jackson Technical triumph Dismal Drama
Tweet Technical Quality Dramatic Quality The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Peter Jackson This visual realisation of a fantasy world of endlessly warring kingdoms is a technical tour-de-force: graphically state of the art with special effects to match. Simon Bright’s Art Direction aided by Andy McLaren and Ben Milson, together with Dan Hennah’s [...]
The Hunt – Thomas Vinterberg. Flipside to the Jimmy Savile saga.
Tweet The Hunt – Thomas Vinterberg This sensitive, insightful Danish film is the flipside to the Jimmy Savile saga. A timely warning that the undoubted truth that we should always listen to children, does not, cannot, mean that we must always take everything they say at face value. What this beautifully acted, subtly [...]
Seven Psychopaths – Martin McDonagh. Anarchic scabrous, black satire
Tweet Seven Psychopaths – Martin McDonagh The spirit of Joseph Heller (Catch-22) haunts this anarchic, scabrous black satire. And it doesn’t get any better than that. Heller took the established but contradictory conventions and attitudes to war as premises and then with a rigorous, implacable logic followed them through to a reductio ad absurdum [...]
End Of Watch – David Ayer: Dumb Derring Duo lose a war.
Tweet End Of Watch – David Ayer End of Watch is David Ayer’s much praised follow-up to his equally critically approved Training Day. It is action-packed, often tensely exciting, rattles along at a furious pace and looks like being a massive box-office hit. It is also in my view a thoroughly bad movie [...]
Silver Linings Playbook – phoney, patronising but with great Lawrentian moments
Tweet Silver Linings Playbook – David O Russell The mesmeric Jennifer Lawrence almost makes this phoney movie watchable – but not quite. For me at least. Claudia Winkleman on BBC’s now equally unwatchable Twittery Film 2012 loved it; while her mate on the show, Danny ‘Boy’ Leigh hated it. Reluctantly, I’m with Danny [...]
Women Bishops – A complete no-brainer rejected by lay women
Tweet Women Bishops Who shall chronicle the fevered incestuous petty politics of the present Anglican Church now that C.P.Snow is no longer with us? If women Priests are today justifiably, angry, frustrated and disappointed; gay Christians must be in despair. This dispute has about as much to do with the exemplary life [...]