I really should have read this years ago. I wish I could have talked to my Grandad about it. I remember that it made a powerful impression on him.
Firstly, it's beautifully written. The detail is so evocative. I'm always fascinated by historical novelists who can truly bring a period that they didn't live through themselves to life for a reader who is also from another time. The trenches in this novel feel real. More importantly, the characters feel real. They are emotionally complex, placed in extreme situations, and yet Faulks has exactly the right kind of light touch required to infuse them with a humanity that makes you ache for what they have to endure. For me this is what makes it so successful. They are not heroes, or stereotypes of any kind, in fact. They are just people, with a full and recognisable range of personality types, pushed in various ways to and beyond the limits of what humans ever expect to live through. Understanding this truly brings home the trauma of WW1, the full extent of the sacrifice, the true pity of a wasted generation of sons and husbands swallowed by the mud or - to no lesser extent in some cases - by the cost of surviving.
At the same time, Faulks balances the destruction, mind-numbing banality and horror of war with a story about life at its most vital, which bookends and interweaves the war sections. By beginning with the story of Wraysford's affair before the war, we are reminded that he is a young man first, soldier second - again, undermining 2D generalisations of what the names on the monuments represent. Throughout the novel, the sense of potential rebirth, of some seed or shoot surviving is ever present. It's delicately done - always small things, never suggesting easy remedies, never undermining the vulnerability and fragility of the lives that were placed so casually before the mechanised slaughter - but ultimately we are left with a sense of healing and continuation that feels more honest and respectful than a straight war novel might have been.
I wonder what my Grandad would have said about it.
I knew this was supposed to be a "classic" but it didn't automatically grab me as something I needed to watch; not being too familiar with Clint Eastwood, I kinda had it down as a bit of a macho boy-film. Borrowed it from Matty, though, and I'm glad I did.
I knew I was going to like it from the opening sequence. I have a real soft spot for 70s crime stuff - the gloves! The silencer! The funk soundtrack and massive yellow font! I was hooked even before Harry got called into the mayor's office and started being stroppy at having his valuable crime-fighting time wasted by the suits in City Hall. Next thing I knew he was foiling a bank robbery while facing the other way and eating a hot dog ("the usual")...doesn't get much better really.
Yeah, it was silly - some very questionable police procedure and, if you stop to think about it for too long, a bit fascistic. But to be honest, if you stop to think about it for too long, you'll be missing the point that this is a simple world, where the bad guys are Bad, and Harry has to be even Badder just to protect the Good guys. So switch off your brain and enjoy the macho-boy-film aspect of it, as well as the highly entertaining 70s suits.
Rented this because I'm a big Al Pacino fan, even though I'd heard it was bad. I'd heard right.
I have never in my life seen such a badly made film. The first thing you notice is that the dialogue is absolutely dreadful.
AL: "It's not a bomb."
STUDENT WITH A CRUSH WHO'S YOUNG ENOUGH TO BE HIS DAUGHTER: "That's good."
AL: ( after a smell-the-fart-acting dramatic pause): Yeah.
The next thing you notice is that criminology lecturer Al's relationship with his students is decidedly odd. They hero-worship him, despite the fact that he's arrogant and borderline sleazy. At first you think it might be some kind of interesting characterisation and that he's going to turn out to be some kind of maverick genius. But no.
So, he's receiving death threats from a killer that he's put away and that (we've already established) he still considers to be dangerous, whilst continuing with his lecture and making no effort to report it. As things unfold, it becomes clear that we're supposed to believe two things: 1) that the psycho has people working on the outside in a fiendish and massively complicated ploy to totally discredit him and 2) despite all the effort that's gone into this and to the 88-minutes-to-live countdown, the psycho is quite prepared to attempt to murder him along the way by running him down/blowing him up/burning down his apartment/shooting him if the film needs a bit of tension injected. Which frankly it does, because it's directed in such a way as to make you feel that you've got ADD. Flashbacks are pointlessly overused throughout, and the director doesn't concentrate on any one thread for long enough for you to care about it.
Far from coming across as some kind of genius, the doctor is basically yanked along at the end of a string, making ridiculously bad calls at every turn and yet somehow inspiring trust and devotion in everyone. Al gets stopped by a police colleague who has been presented as part of the set-up with seemingly watertight evidence that Al's actually the killer. (Two women, raped and murdered, forensics have found Al's semen at both crime scenes). Al persuades him to give him ten minutes to prove his innocence. What kind of moron cop is this? Mind you, none of the professionals seem that professional. His devoted assistant shags a student in the restricted office, one of his criminology students has a girlie fit of hysterics when she sees a body (allowing Al to comfort her) and Al himself, with his years of experience and amazing reputation, doesn't EVER answer any questions about what's going on when asked by people trying to assist him, and instead phones up a TV channel to wind up the killer, only to get owned in the face with stories of massive monumental errors of judgement that he has made in the past that he can't deny.
Worth a watch with a friend if you want to entertain yourselves with just how bad a film can be.
Borrowed this one from Matty (cheers Matt).
I remember it getting good reviews when it came out but I never felt compelled to give it a watch. I'm not a huge fan of gangster films (Goodfellas in particular is a film I found to be completely overrated). This is mainly because they feature completely unsympathetic characters and watching their inevitable fall from grace doesn't engage me much. Las Vegas has never held much interest for me either - the notion of discovering that it's a glitzy good-time place with a dark underbelly is kinda lost on someone for whom glitzy good times are pretty much associated with dark underbellies from the get go. That's just me.
This was different to what I expected though, whilst being exactly what I expected in terms of plot. Very well made, good story, interesting but flawed main character (De Niro) with a truly shady associate (Pesci) and an even shadier wife (Stone). It's long, so I watched it in chunks and I found myself looking forward to seeing where the story was going to twist next.
Worth a watch.
From Steve (again). This was directed by Judd Apatow, and I did quite like The 40-Year-Old Virgin so I thought I'd give it a go.
This one irritated me from the outset, really. It was partly because of the title. What we have here is a bunch of Hollywood comedians playing comedians (ooh, clever! Life imitating art eh?) but actually exposing the fact that stand-up comedians are insecure, whiney and ruthlessly ambitious to the point of screwing over their friends on a regular basis. This is a risky strategy on the part of the director - apparently the irony of having Adam Sandler "playing" a comedian who's not even slightly funny and is in reality an arrogant, unsympathetic arse has been lost on all concerned.
It's hard in this film to know how you're supposed to feel. It's poorly structured, too long and Apatow seems to think he's being some kind of directorial maverick by not having a single sympathetic character in there. I think you're supposed to like Seth Rogen, but you get the impression that he's slow on the uptake rather than a nice guy lacking in the vices that characterise the others - he has his moments of being just as shallow, insecure and untrustworthy as all the others. I also think you're supposed to find the jokes funny. They're not (deliberately not in places, accidentally not in others) and this is the problem - there's no reason to care about anyone or anything that happens to them.
So by the time Sandler's character George Simmons is staring at his own mortality, any element of this story that might be moving at all has already been wrung out. You find yourself watching completely dispassionately as he struggles to get to grips with what's happening to him and what he's done with his life. He's just too much of a bastard for the movie to have the charm of This is Spinal Tap, which is probably the closest reference to what it's aiming for.
The last part of the film shows Simmons trying to fix his empty life by pursuing the now unhappily married one-that-got-away. Again, it's hard to care about anyone in the scenario, sympathies are undermined all round. Maybe there's supposed to be something clever about the ending, some defying of expectations, but ultimately movies should take you on some kind of ride, and this is like sitting for two and a half hours in Apatow's car waiting for him to start the engine. This is ultimately my objection - despite being vain, weak, unpleasant and unfunny, Apatow still thinks Hollywood's comedians are worthy of my undivided attention. Ultimately, it's an arrogant film and that puts me off.
This was the 2-disc collector's edition of the DVD as well. I have to say I have never in my life seen a wider range of extras or been less tempted to investigate. "35 minutes of deleted scenes and classic stand-up!" If you deleted everything self-indulgent, smug or painfully unfunny from the movie you could really add to the bonus material.
Again, this one was borrowed from Steve - cheers bud!
It's a horror/comedy hybrid about a giant man-eating crocodile living in a Lake in Maine. After it gruesomely kills a diver, a team made up of the local sherrif and his deputies, a paleantologist, a park ranger and a kooky crocodile obsessive head off to find it.
The plot is paper thin, as is the characterisation, but it's pretty clear that the director has no interest whatsoever in putting those things in the film, figuring (correctly) that the audience for a horror-comedy about a massive killer crocodile aren't really going to be too interested in the characters' motivations or the whys and wherefores of how the creature came to be in the lake. This is explcit in places - for example, there is a debate at one point about why they would send a paleantologist to track down a killer reptile (clearly they wouldn't) and why she hangs around the camp instead of going back to the town if she hates the countryside so much. It's obvious that the real answer is "because that would lower the ratio of snappy dialogue and amusing one-liners as the motley crew bicker amongst themselves", and even the crocodile comes second to this to be honest. As for the old lady who lives by the lake - nothing about that makes any sense whatsoever. But she says some rude words, and despite yourself, you do laugh.
As a horror film it's not amazing. There are some gruesome moments but overall I'd say this is weighted towards the comedy end of horror-comedy, and the comedy's pretty good - not witty, not clever, just well-timed and dry.
Next time you feel like switching off your brain completely, give this a watch and see what you think.
Mandy brought this one over the other night. I'd never seen it before and I've got to say it wasn't what I was expecting.
I do like Michael Caine and his performance was very good, but the character wasn't the swinging-London-cheeky-chappie I'd been led to expect. He's a deeply selfish, misogynist bully, deluding himself that he's found a way to skip through life avoiding responsibility whilst actually getting trapped in the ever-more problematic mire of the consequences of his own actions.
Although probably not something to stick on to watch when you're in any way depressed (it's a feel-bad movie) it's still well worth watching for fans of Michael Caine, fans of movies that make you think, or fans of truly hideous sixties wallpaper.
it's pretty dated too - not something I mind though, but I'll be interested to compare it to the remake.
