bongo-6 Reviews

Silent Witness: The Penitent - Part 2 (2023) Season 26, Episode 2

Not a documentary. folks.

[6/10 · 16 February 2024]

I don't know whether we are allowed to review the reviewers, but I have never seen a worst load of reviews since Peter O'Toole did the world tour of Macbeth. They were so bad he had then pasted at the front of house of each theatre on the tour.

This episode was as good as any in this long running series and to say that Jack and Nikki have no chemistry, in my opinion, is wrong; I thought they looked very sweet together. Another review said the acting and the script was bad but didn't say why.

I thought the production values were excellent, I liked the look of the Cathedral - possibly Southwark - and the idea that some children came over from Italy, infiltrating into high levels of banking and politics and were primed to be some kind of mafiosa, rather like the sleeper cells in spy thrillers, was a good idea.

Another paranoiac reviewer saw some very dystopic extreme left political comments - come on it's a piece of very entertaining TV, not to be taken too seriously and certainty not a documentary.

Oppenheimer (I) (2023)

Classic Movie.

[10/10 · 29 August 2023]

There are not many films made, these days, which will become classics, in the traditional sense, but I'll say 'Oppenheimer' is one. We all know it's about the bomb: but when the bomb goes off, there is plenty of time left, as the film is also about the aftermath - which we are still living with today.

There is not one bad camera shot in the whole picture, good framing and some terrific performances from the cast.

The terrific cinemaphotography is by Hoyte Van Hoytema, who has worked with Christopher Nolan before on 'Tenet' and 'Interstellar' to name but two.

You may get a little way through the story, when you realise who the various actors who are playing the roles - some are cameos - and there is a great performance by Robert Downey Jr, who plays Lewis Strauss, who seems obsessed with the quick-word Einstein had with J. Robert Oppenheimer. When people stop a conversation as you approach them, they must be talking about you, as every paranoic person knows, but sometimes they are talking about something more important.

The movie jumps about in time, there are very few clues as to when certain scenes happen, but the excellent make up - and maybe FX - helps, and in the end it all comes together.

We see Oppenheimer in many times of his life, his affairs, his obsession with another woman, Jean Tatlock, sympathetically played by Florence Pugh, a woman his wife, Emily Blunt, also sees, sitting naked across the naked Oppenheimer's lap copulating but only in her mind and, also Oppenheimer's mind, as he is given the third degree by a committee; a committee we learn about later, and we realise that just off the scene, somewhere, lurks the infamous senator from Wisconsin, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who sees many reds under many beds and somewhere, he is accusing Oppenheimer of being a red, a communist, and his henchmen are questioning his integrity and his love of the country.

Senator McCarthy who was the biggest public face during the 'cold war' has no face in this brilliant movie.

Jean Tatlock, his mistress, was a journalist who worked for 'The Western Worker' a communist newspaper, and she was probably the reason he was being questioned in the first place, and must have been on his mind throughout the ordeal and that might have been the reason for Oppenheimers fantasy.

Oppenheimer worked with Niels Bohr, who is played by Kenneth Branagh: Bohr helped develop the Bohr method, he proposed that energy levels of the electrodes can revolve around the atomic nucleus and can jump from one energy level to another.

Oppenheimer looks at patterns in a stream, patterns of rings of water, like a stone has been dropped, and the circles envelop each other and he sees this in the stars too.

It's a moment; a moment a bit like when Alan Turing sees the Fibonacci sequence in a pine cone.

There was always the risk that if there was an explosion from a nuclear device, it could be the end of the world, as the chain reaction might never stop.

There was a very strange fact about Doctor Oppenheimer, in that people didn't think he was 100% sane. They say there were traits such as of dementia praecox, which today is diagnosed as schizophrenia, some say autism and even, these days, Asperger's syndrome.

Some of the traits could be linked with just plain shyness, as he had problems looking people in the eye, but, on the other hand, he got on with people and didn't really think he was better than anybody else, or was part of an elite group of people with a superior attitude and intellect; Einstein suggested that he was. Maybe this all comes from the 'mad professor' theory, who was a stock character such as the father spending all his time in the lab, working on a formula.

There are images in the film which, such as whirlpools, which make him think of the effect of a nuclear explosion.

A fighter pilot, reported images of the U2 rockets, on their way from Germany to England, which he witnessed on the way back from a raid. The scene is shown of the pilot seeing the rockets and later, we also see Oppenheimer in the same scene, making him think that 'The Manhattan Project' needed to be completed quickly before Germany invented the atom bomb.

Oppenheimer was likened to Prometheus, who stole the fire from the Greek gods just as he, Oppenheimer, was stealing his formulas from the stars - the gods.

There are so many brilliant performances in this piece, too numerable to mention, but the brilliant performance of Cillian Murphy makes Oppenheimer into some kind of individual who goes from peaks to peaks to collect knowledge of how to build a nuclear reactor/fusion - who knows where this came from and, in fact, Oppenheimer was a genius, and is the film's director Christopher Nolan a genius too? I think so.

Broken (2017– )

Terrific performance from Sean Bean.

[8/10 · 5 July 2017]

This is not a perfect series; it all adds up in the end, but each episode is devoted to a different character and plot line, and some of those slip in to following episodes. The playing of the priest by Sean Bean is as natural a performance that you will see anywhere. Bean plays a maverick of a priest with unconventional approaches and attitudes to religion and a very chatty way of delivering the sermon and the mass. This is a priest, though, with a past; a past of the ordinary red blooded male who becomes a priest after he has sewn his wild oats and he questions the faith and whether he is fit enough to even be a priest. His demons attack him every time he performs the Eucharist - if perform is the right word - and images from his past flood through his mind every time he takes the piece of bread before he turns it into Christ. The first episode tells you what the whole series is about when a character is found 'borrowing money' from the till of her employer just to feed her kids. Then we have a scene at the Social Security office, after she is fired, which we have seen in films by Ken Loach and Tony Garnet but we go a little further in this story. The performances are generally excellent and played for realism but everything seemed to be blamed on the southerners. Apart from a black family from the West Indies all the cast were 'northerners' but why did they have to have the big bad bully of a bookie who makes all the money from his slot machines played by a 'southerner' - a cockney? It's as if everything is blamed on the south east of the country - the priest says this in one of his sermons in the final episode - and sometimes the script takes a heavy hammer to the subject when a more subtle approach might have been more acceptable; I mean I've seen tally men in Manchester fleecing the poor housewife who's run out of money but the whole piece is very highly recommended, nonetheless, and very watchable with beautiful music and songs by Nina Simone and Ray Davies. The last thing I would say about this series is that it is very difficult to work out if it is pro or anti Catholic or even religion; the priest is a good man and does good work and where would we be without the work of the church but they preach to us telling us that there is a God - or a god - and it's as if they help us in the community and expect us to believe. The same dilemma is in the excellent British movie The Singer not the Song with John Mills and Dirk Bogarde.

Spender (1991–1993)

accent

[7/10 · 19 March 2015]

This is just a response to the last review that I can see 'Jimmy Nail's accent' - unbelievable!!! The accent has to travel - if his accent hadn't have been gentrified nobody outside of Geordieland would be able to understand it - is that what you want?

There are many American movies and series which do not take the rest of the world into consideration and shows like Eastenders in Britain are totally incomprehensible to the American ear.

As it is the Geordie accent isn't understandable around Britain.

I remember this series as being hard hitting and well acted with a bad performance by Spender's nemesis the other cop - didn't seem to ring true I remember.

The Eccentric Mr Turner (2015)

A virtuoso performance by Gary Taylor.

[2 February 2015]

I found time to go to Stratford upon Avon over the weekend to see a late night screening of a film – The Eccentric Mr Turner. Yes another film about England's greatest landscape painter; if not the world's greatest.

The film is a short one and deals with the last part of the great man's life and features a virtuoso performance in the title role by Gary Taylor. With a few flourishes and flicks of the wrist, a nod and a wink here and there and a look in the eye that makes you think, look and wonder, Taylor introduces us to an aspect in the life on JMW Turner that the recent big budget bio-pic missed.

Why the eccentric and why the mister?

When he first started to stay with his eventual last lover, Mrs Booth, he was known, in her guest house, as Mr Booth - and the eccentricity?

The first thing we see in the film is a painting and we hear Turner admonishing someone; the someone in question has made some kind of mistake and made a mess of something – another fine mess you got me into – and we find out that that someone being lectured to, is a horse; his horse! And the horse's name?

Hercules!

We learn from Mrs Booth, ably played by Tina Parry, that Turner had fallen asleep and Hercules had to find his own way home.

And then he turns his attention to his two cats – Wellington and Napoleon, would you believe – and they are still out and will be disciplined upon their return.

As he wanders around his studio giving instructions to Mrs Booth, he is starting another painting - the painting turns out to be his most famous and notorious 'The Slave Ship' which he had completed many years before.

It soon becomes clear that his life is flashing before his eyes as Turner paints and goes through his experiences meeting again his father, to whom he was very close and misses so much: Charles Dickens, The Prince of Wales and George Stephenson. He also meets two of the crew of the Slave Ship; he learns that the human cargo are treated wretchedly and if any are sick they are thrown overboard. Just like that – no nursing needed just a chuck over one of the sides.

One of the crew, he meets again, struck up a relationship with one of the women who had been thrown into the ocean and the moving scene thrusts Turner on to The Slave Ship painting, and as we have been watching the film the famous painting slowly but suddenly appears before our eyes.

This has and is a one man stage show and Gary Taylor would paint The Slave Ship at each venue – he must have painted it many times but in this film he had but one chance as the film was shot in one long take.

No edits or cuts just one long take, in pristine black and white shot beautifully by Michael Booth who also directs.

I would like to think that this lovely little film would go on from here – it's low budget but doesn't look it.

Here is an excerpt from Turner's

"Fallacies of Hope" (1812):

"Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;

Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds

Declare the Typhon's coming.

Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard

The dead and dying - ne'er heed their chains

Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!

Where is thy market now?"

Mr. Turner (2014)

JMW Turner and the Hog's Head.

[8/10 · 18 November 2014]

When the movie, Mr Turner, opens you are left in no doubt that a very important artist is about to make an entrance. Turner's father goes around the market to buy fruit, vegetables and other things that makes you ask the question if they are to eat or to be used as colours – after all this is the one and only JMW Turner, Britain's greatest ever artist; Billy, to his father, Mr Billy to his housekeeper - a housekeeper, who is a strange looking woman, with a stoop and a skin condition which progresses with the movie; he uses her for fleeting sex in passing; she uses him the same with a bit more; he greets her when he comes in with a squeeze of her breasts and a touch of her pubic area through her dress in both cases. He does this when she stands by him sitting in his chair and he gives her the greeting without even looking at her – she doesn't look at him. I loved this film; I loved everything about it. Some clever clogs might come along and criticise it for leaving some things out and putting some things in which didn't happen but . . .this is a movie and a great one. I don't know much about Turner at all apart from the fact that his father was a barber and one of the things the father buys at a street market is a pig's head; a whole head. The father – the barber – shaves the pig's head, with a cut throat razer, and when they greet each other they hug and kiss and settle down to eat the pig's head. They cut slices off and munch it down and it is as if Turner has eaten so much pig that he sounds like one. He grunts all the way through the film in fact Timothy Spall plays Turner as a pig; a sympathetic lovable hog. Laurence Olivier said he based his famous portrayal of Richard III on the Big Bad Wolf; well I think Spall has chosen a pig. His perpetual grunt proves that. The film doesn't go into Turner's private life too much; well his really private life; we know there was a wife, two daughters and a very strange looking granddaughter – is it a doll or a reject from Call the Midwife? - but they make two entrances whilst we are treated to his artistic raison d'etre. It is not a typical Hollywood bio-pic even though Constable is in it and other famous figures like Ruskin but there are no lines like "Mr Rolls meet Mr Royce" or "Engels? Meet Marx." It should win some Oscars, and deserves, to – acting, directing, photography – well, I hope so, but I don't think so; certainly some BAFTAs but I would like to see Mike Leigh get it for directing and Timothy Spall for acting from BAFTA and Oscar.

The Business (2005)

no morals from the film makers.

[6/10 · 28 August 2009]

Lots of things in this film are good; it's well acted (with one or two exceptions), directed, written, edited and shot; it shows the very unattractive world in the Costa Del Crime in Spain – maybe Malaga but who knows; nobody has any taste and they talk and dress like Chavs or pikeys – you take your pick. But the problem I have with it is its morality; there are a few incidents in this movie where women really get beaten up; the opening scene, for example eventually reveals a really savage beating; maybe about ten or fifteen hard punches and then when the girl moves another one to put her to sleep; maybe permanently. If these kind of things happen in a movie they should be resolved with the instigator getting his comeuppance – not in this film and I don't know why. The film has a great 70s/80s sound track but skip it!

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

This is brilliant but don't leave your mind at home now that it's spotless.

[10/10 · 7 November 2008]

I enjoyed this film very much; it reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut, in a way, with characters asking the author/director what is going on and what the plot is about as the author is not only directing the play, he is actually writing and directing their lives; there are other people who play the author too and quite a few people play the same woman in his life as the play he is trying to produce is autobiographical; it has to be, I suppose, if it is real.

There were times, I have to confess, when I couldn't tell the difference between Emily Watson and Samantha Morton.

There is a lot of talk about the author/director's bowels and we see the terrible colors of his feces and urine and the pustules on his body whilst on the radio there are news items about arthritis and the billion dollar payout by drug companies to patients. The author/director takes handfuls of arthritis pills and as the movie progresses he finds it harder and harder to walk, think in a straight line or even exist.

Early on a faucet bursts as he is shaving and a piece of piping cuts his head and he needs stitches; so we can see, throughout the movie, where in time we are, when Charlie Kauffman jumps about, in this non-linear movie, by the progress of the scar and we can also see this by his hair: sometimes he is going bald, sometimes he is bald then suddenly he has a full head of hair; a bit like the hair color of Kate Winslet in 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' which changed frequently giving the viewer a clue as to what stage in real time the scenes were actually taking place.

Indeed, there is a strong similarity between 'Synecdoche, New York' and 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' with the same kind of mood music which gave the scenes extra meaning but the greatest thing about this movie is the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman in the central role of the author/director Caden Cotard; this is a tour de force and puts his Oscar winning performance as Truman Capote to shame.

I said it reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut and, indeed, there is a character who appears in the background of early scenes who appears to be stalking Caden Cotard who reminded me of Billy Pilgrim from 'Slaughterhouse Five' and one of the lines in the movie by Samantha Morton, to her date, is 'Do you like Beaver?'

This is my impression after seeing the movie once; I suspect I will have to see it again to fully understand it and maybe then I will have a different take – I could be totally wrong.

The Queen (2006)

Very very unfair to Charles.

[6/10 · 16 October 2006]

Stephen Frears has always been one of my favourite directors; he has made some of the best films over the past twenty or thirty years or so; his films on TV were good too and he has done a great job on this film – almost; and that's a really big almost! This family, the Royal Family, are almost impossible to take seriously; they walk around in kilts, play silly games and stalk stags when they should be facing up to the tragedy that has just entered their lives; to portray the royal family as it is portrayed in this movie is a plus for director Frears and the performance from Helen Mirren as The Queen will probably win her an Oscar with a nomination, at least, for Michael Sheen who plays Tony Blair.

After all this meticulous casting and care how did Stephen Frears allow some kind of Prince Charles impersonator to play Prince Charles?

The portrayal of Charles in this movie, both by the actor who plays him, the writer who wrote it that way and the director who let it be played that way is a disgrace; let us not forget who Charles is and where he came from; look at some of his biography on IMDb: 'In 1968, he graduated college, becoming the first heir to the British throne to graduate college. Later that year he was formally invested as Prince of Wales, a title he received in 1957. He dated many women, two of whom are Camilla Shand (later known as Camilla Parker-Bowles), and Sarah Spencer, the sister of his future wife.' 'His first military services appointment was in 1969. He currently holds the rank of captain in the Royal Navy and group captain in the Royal Air Force. His favourite food is scrambled eggs and he likes to drink whiskey. He enjoys going to Scotland, UK; Klosters, Switzerland; and the Eleuthra in the Caribbean. He enjoys hunting, shooting, fishing, polo, skiing, painting, writing and reading.' Does this sound like a man who 'thought he heard a shot' when a car back fired; does it sound like someone who would ask for 'extra protection' – as they say in the movie – because of that shot which got a big laugh at the intimated cowardly Charles on the night I saw it at the Arclight in Hollywood last week?

Did we really have to see the silly pulling of faces like the 'Spitting Image' puppets that portrayed him on Television and the bending of the mouth like a demented Frank Spencer? We have all seen footage of Charles standing next to the five feet ten Diana and being just under her height – she used to wear flat shoes when she was with him so as not to tower over him and we have seen Tony Blair stand next to George W. Bush; Blair stands one inch higher than the five feet eleven Bush; in this film Prince Charles is played about six inches taller than Blair – six feet six!!!!

This film could have been so good – in fact it was if you ignored the portrayal of Prince Charles, the fish fingers for Tony Blair's dinner (this is a sophisticated man whether you like him or not) and the Newcastle football shirt he wears around the house with his name on the back. There will be other films made of this period in the history of Britain's Royal Family and when it is played by people who don't necessarily look like the people they are playing maybe we will see it in a better light – rather like Helen Mirren's portrayal of Elizabeth I recently.

Munich (2005)

What a let down.

[4/10 · 18 September 2006]

This is a film about a fascinating subject; it may not be true but fascinating all the same. A bit like 'The Day of the Jackal' – nothing to disprove it ever happened.

I remember watching the Olympic Games in 1972 on the television; these were my Olympic Games; I had the time to watch all the events, I had a great new colour television set and I knew a lot about the track and field events. This was the time of David Bedford the great British middle distance runner; he was breaking records for the 5000 and 10000 metres almost every week and he was set to show it to the world in the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972.

We turned the television set on one day and all hell had broken loose; we didn't understand what was going on; we couldn't understand why anybody could find something more important than the Olympic Games; why couldn't they, at least, let us see the 5000 metres final or even the 1500 metres? But it was serious; every time we watched the TV there was a hooded man standing on a balcony; the camera was fixed off and commentators all around the world spoke to their respective countries and filled time as we watched the fixed off shot.

We thought that the Olympic Games would be abandoned but it was not to be; one morning we got up and we were told it was all over; the entire Israeli team had been killed at the airport; it was reported that the Germans had opened fire on the helicopter, taking the hostages and terrorists to some destination or other, and that all on board the chopper had been killed.

They decided to cancel the Olympic Games for one day in respect for those killed and then they resumed; David Bedford, the greatest middle distance runner in Britain didn't win anything; the 5000 and 10000 metres were both won by a Finnish runner who, it was alleged doped his own blood.

So this film is supposed to fill in the blank spaces for us, the people who were transfixed to our television sets all those years ago; I'm not sure whether it does that or not or whether it just gives us the interpretation of a Mister Steven Spielberg.

It tells of the Israeli cabinet meeting deciding to send a crack assassination squad to kill the master minds behind the Munich massacre. "We have 11 Palestinian names; each one of them had a hand in planning Munich. We want them all dead." This could have been a riveting thriller but it isn't; it was directed by, arguably, the most successful director in movie history, written by maybe the most successful playwright living, Tony Kushner, and Eric Roth a successful screenwriter.

So what went wrong because this isn't a great film; maybe they should have contacted people from the other side? The film starts off okay but then goes into soap opera and propaganda; just look at some of the lines from the movie: "The only blood I care about is Jewish blood." "We kill for our future." "We kill for peace." These lines make you ask yourself what this film would have been like if made by Martin Scorsese; as it is it tries to be too many things.

It tries to be funny; for example; the bomb maker – and I'm not giving anything away and spoiling anything, doesn't make the device big enough for one killing and makes it too big for another killing – this is shot for comedy and nothing should be funny about it; one victim is shot as he carries a bag full of groceries – now why did they do that? So that he could be shot through the shopping bag and that the bag could leak of milk – you know the scene we have been watching it for years but this was shot by one of the most successful directors in the history of movies – just not good enough.

At one point the assassination squad are given a 'safe house' in Athens only to find that they are sharing it with other terrorists; there's a bizarre scene as if they are at a boy-scout jamboree and shouting out their troop names; IRA, ETTA, Bader-Meinhof; then they settle down and all sleep in the one room; this gives us an excuse for the two leaders to talk and philosophise about their beliefs with the leader, Avner, not letting on he is Jewish, of course, but the scene is a clumsy effort to educate and preach to us – the audience and we know how the relationship is going to end.

The film is also very annoying in its use of the zoom lens; I thought zooming had gone out of fashion since the seventies but no; it's just lazy and saves them using tracks and cranes.

There are some nice performances from Ciarán Hinds and Geoffrey Rush but what a let down.

The Filth and the Fury (2000)

When it stopped being fun.

[10/10 · 30 May 2006]

The Sex Pistols were one of the most underrated bands ever; just listen to the driving guitar of Steve Jones, the wailing dynamic voice of Johnny Rotten and the drums of Paul Cooke driving the rhythm with Glen Matlock on the bass; yes Glen Matlock on the bass and not Sid Vicious; Sid came later and couldn't play the bass, by all accounts, thus giving the band its reputation of incompetence which they didn't deserve; so they only used three chords; so what; so did some of the rock'n'roll greats of the fifties and so did The Ramones.

I am not of the same age as The Sex Pistols, I identify more with the likes of Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly, but I sure envied the fans in the 100 club shown in this movie when they witnessed The Sex Pistols there on Oxford Street with Sid in the audience inventing his pogo dance.

In this film we get an early glimpse of their Svengali, Malcolm McLaren, at the store SEX that he owned with his then wife Vivienne Westwood; we see him as he swans around the shop like Sean O'Casey's strutting peacock, wearing a teddy-boy suit and sporting a duck's arse hair cut; here was the opportunist who was to take The Sex Pistols to the top and leave them there; high and almost dry in America with no money, no access to credit and no communication as he refused to take or return any of their calls; McLaren was booked into a luxury hotel whilst the band had to make do with some motel.

The Pistols response to this was to tell the audience that they were getting 'one song and one song only as this isn't fun;' Johnny Rotten called on his alter ego John Lydon to relay that pathetic statement to the American crowd; this didn't seem to be the type of crowd that cut Sid's face that night with a missile earlier in an American performance; this was a crowd that took notice when they heard that it wasn't fun any more; it was then that we heard the voice over of Steve Jones saying that he had looked at Sid trying to play a bass, that he wasn't sure was plugged in, and wondered if he wanted to go ahead being a Pistol; he said he left soon after that but had regretted it ever since; he loved performing and loved the sex it had brought him throughout the touring life of The Sex Pistols.

Interviews with the members of the band were carried out in silhouette throughout and it became clear that the band trusted the man doing the interviews; one Julien Temple the director of this film who knew the band from his previous movie 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle' which he had made twenty years prior to this one.

Even though it had been twenty one years since the death of the twenty two year old Sid Vicious, the telling of the story brought a tear to Johnny Rotten's eye as it is quite clear that John Ritchie, or John Beverly, or whatever Sid's real name was, was the biggest victim in the whole Sex Pistols story; he was one of the Johns who had always been a friend of the other John the John they changed to Johnny Rotten.

There is a lot of archive footage in the film and a lot of it is entertaining; we do see the situation as it was in Britain during the seventies which led up to the famous 'winter of discontent' and we even see the man himself, Laurence Olivier, uttering those famous Shakespearian lines from his own movie 'Richard III' from whence the newspaper sub-editors stole the quote; we see political Britain and racist xenophobic Britain but we also see very funny Britain; there is footage from some of the funniest men of the day: where else can we see archive footage of Nat Jackley, Tommy Cooper, Max Wall, Billy Dainty and even Arthur Askey who was as funny as toothache? There is the infamous television interview with Bill Grundy who, we are told by Steve in voice over, was drunk too – we weren't there but it was a terrible interview and the poor fellow deserved to be fired which came soon after that day in 1976.

I didn't have anything to do with these people as there was another CS on the scene in London who owned a club and knew Julien Temple but I remember them from afar as their music was as exciting as the first time people of my age had heard Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard; it was a terrible shock when they went away and Elvis started to sing ballads but bands like the Pistols hit the dust too when it stopped being fun.

Hard Candy (2005)

A sick film?

[4/10 · 11 April 2006]

Why is this film sick? Well to start off it doesn't deal with the issues; it seems to say the way to treat paedophiles is to castrate them; it says don't go to the police take the law into your own hands; it also has a smart mouthed 14 year old girl in the lead who we, as the audience, are not too sure about; is she mad or is she hell bent on some kind of mission or revenge? She also has the dialogue of a mature woman when she should be speaking like a 14 year old - bad dialogue writing Mister Nelson.

In the movie 'Misery' the audience has sympathy for the writer who has been kidnapped by a stalker; in this film we learn early on that the paedophile has been stalked but after the initial exuberance of his capture our sympathies seem to change when he is abused and tortured. We have to dispel belief when they cut to a scene and we see him in a position that would take two grown men to put him into; we have to ask ourselves how a girl of less than 110 pounds lifts a 200 pound man onto a table and stands him up when he is unconscious – now how did she do that?

However, the direction and cinematography are brilliant and there is a technique in one of the tracking shots, used a couple of times, when we go around the table, out through a door and back into the room through another door to look at the scene from the other side of the room, which looks very impressive; there are also semi strobe like affects in a couple of the action scenes which I liked.

The Internet is a godsend to paedophiles and if this film does nothing else at all it points that out; it is also aimed at a young female audience, where it might do the most good, so it is a pity that it will be rated 'R' in the US and '18' in the UK.

I'm not sure of the significance of the red hood which is seen on the publicity cards and posters unless it is some kind of homage to Nicolas Roeg's 'Don't Look Now' or some reference to Little Red Riding Hood, as it is only seen for a fleeting moment during the movie. There are also terrific performances from Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page in the two leading roles and a good directorial debut to feature films from David Slade but there are certain moments in this film when the audience claps at the same kind of things that were applauded in 'Thelma and Louise' which made me feel a little uneasy and 'part of the mob.' These scenes made a few male members of the preview audience last night at the Director's Guild squirm in their seats and hide their eyes so be warned – it isn't pretty.

Bloom (I) (2003)

We are very lucky that a director like Sean Walsh came along when he did and made such a beautiful film.

[10/10 · 4 August 2005]

When you go to see a movie it helps if you know a little bit about the subject. For example if you see a James Bond film it helps if you know that he is British and against the Russians – or whatever. It's the same with this film – it helps if you know about James Joyce and helps even more if you know about Ulysses which the movie has been adapted from. The book has many themes and it's a book where the words are very important – not the plot; so the director has made the words important to this movie.

One of the most famous passages in Ulysses is Molly Bloom's Penelope soliloquy at the end of the book. It starts on page 659 and ends on page 704 – it is one long stream of consciousness sentence with no punctuation and only gaps for paragraphs; it takes in many images and history of the characters. In this film the director, Sean Walsh, starts with this soliloquy and during it he cuts to various memories of her loving 'Poldy' – Leopold Bloom - in good times and to her sexual exploits with the current beau Blazes Boylan. This works very well and the music, 'Love's Old Sweet Song,' matches underneath the soliloquy perfectly. Ulysses, apart from being written in many styles of other writers of the time, has parts which are dedicated to the human body, parts which are dedicated to colours and parts which are dedicated to music and one of the most memorable pieces of music, which goes with the stunning cinematography by Ciarán Tanham, is the aforementioned 'Love's Old Sweet Song'; this music sets the mood for the whole film.

The soliloquy is used throughout the film as a counter commentary to the innermost thoughts of her husband, Bloom. He knows what she is doing back at their house in Eccles Street with Blazes Boylan, who is supposed to be there to arrange a concert tour, so he stays out of the way and goes on his famous wander around Dublin with the text being spoken in voice over as he observes his day, on June 16th 1904, as it has been his day, Bloomsday, ever since.

Ulysses is what you might describe as an epic novel. Other adaptations of epic novels, such as East of Eden, concentrate on a certain section of the book. This film doesn't do that. There will be those who might think this film tries to do too much but I don't think so; I think it does enough. It gives you a smattering of what Ulysses is about and if you have never read it this film will give you a good start; a kind of Cliff's Notes on film.

I first heard Stephen Rea play Stephen Dedalus on BBC radio and here he is coming full circle and playing Bloom. A little less rotund than one has imagined Bloom to be but perfectly cast nonetheless and very intelligently played - as is Molly Bloom by the voluptuous Angeline Ball – hasn't she come on since her debut in 'The Commitments' and why don't we see more of her?

Usually it's very hard to get anything by James Joyce produced as the rights to his works are owned by his grandson Stephen. But I believe this film was started when James Joyce's works were in public domain before the law changed. We are very lucky that a director like Sean Walsh came along when he did and made such a beautiful film. I think he was governed by the budget in a good way as I dread to think what a Hollywood Studio would have done with a massive budget.

As I mentioned this took place on June 16th 1904 and on that day the winner of the gold cup was a horse called 'Throwaway' and when Bloom inadvertently tips the winner we can see that the jockey on the horse is a certain Mr Sean Walsh.

The reason why this story is set on June 16th 1904 is because that was the day James Joyce first walked out with his beloved Nora Barnacle. As Sean Walsh took a little licence over the end credits with Bloom wandering around modern Dublin might it have been more fitting as this was a film to have a glimpse of James Joyce and Nora walking together on that fateful day?

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

Taken on face value this was a brilliant film.

[10/10 · 2 August 2005]

This is a really good film with great performances by the two leads who are ably supported by the rest of the cast. Particularly good was the way they showed in their relationship, through thick and thin, hail storm or sunshine, that they loved each other. What a wonderful scene when they had to say goodbye! The fact that Walter Salles has done such a good job with this film means we might see him try and do Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.' It's a pity that some people are brain washed by their governments into thinking certain things about Che Guevara, Castro and Cuba. I hope those few votes in Florida by exiled Cubans have been worth it. Did Castro really start the revolution in Cuba to join up with the Soviet Union or did he come to American first and was left with no choice? Who knows! But taken on face value this was a brilliant film.

Love, Honor and Obey (2000)

Just a load of blokes mucking around with their birds and nothing more.

[1/10 · 22 July 2005]

This is a terrible film: a very bad rip-off of 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' but I suppose if you liked that film you might, conceivably, like this one: might, I say so don't take it as a recommendation.

'Love, Honour and Obey' is very badly directed by the two directors Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis – maybe this is a case of too many directors?

For instance the first time you see the character Maureen, played by Denise Van Outen you just see the back of her head' - maybe she couldn't make it in that day and they used a double but the film is peppered with such annoying shots; this is just bad coverage.

Fat Alan gets stabbed then when he stands outside by a gate he suffers for a while, then the shot fades then comes up again to see him later on suffering more then it fades again and comes back again. What was that all about? The fading technique happens later in the film too when Ray has a scene with his mother and in other places.

There is a scene where the gang dress as Arab sheiks so they can go and view diamonds in an up market hotel. On the way to the hotel each of the gang takes a Viagra tablet so that when the man selling the diamond - or whatever it was - arrives he is faced with the Arab sheiks sitting around with huge erections – also using their London accents, by the way, so it became clear that the only reason they were dressed that way was to show the erections.

Another time one member of the gang is advising his pal how to bring some spice into his sex life and to do this he gets him to strap on a dildo and make love – for the want of a better phrase – to a rubber doll. Then the doll runs out of wind just in time for someone to come in the door and surprise them – talk about contrived!

Unless I am very much mistaken there are no police in this film. They didn't come anywhere near the long gun fight half way through.

JonnyLee Miller plays Jonny a postman – he calls himself a courier. Jude Law plays Jude and Ray Winstone plays – you guessed it – Ray. Ray is Jude's uncle and is a gangland boss. Jonny wants to be in the gang so he asks Jude for an introduction and the movie goes down hill from there.

There are some good actors in this film but they're not very good in it - they just do a lot of shouting so much so that you can hear their voices squeaking when they try and laugh – it's unbelievable that such a film could even be made as it really is just a load of blokes mucking around with their birds and nothing more. If you want to see a good London film, with good acting, don't go and see this one – go see 'Layer Cake.'

The Game of Their Lives (2005)

They got it wrong.

[3/10 · 14 April 2005]

This could have been a good film but they got it wrong. The football match at the end - or soccer if you like – was OK but the rest missed so many opportunities. England was not the number one team in the world at the time – they never were. This was the first time England entered the world cup. Up to this time they didn't know how they fared against foreign teams as they hardly played them – a couple of years later they played Hungary and got the shock of their lives when they lost 7-2. Football, in England was and is a working class game. In the film they depicted the England players with upper middle class accents. Stan Mortenson was a Geordie and had a Geordie accent. The rest of the team would have had working class accents too. At the time the England players – so called professionals – were earning less than the $100 per week promised to the part time Americans; nothing was made of this irony. These English players would be subsidizing their incomes from football with regular jobs – some of them in the mines, some working behind the counters in shops. It wasn't till a few years later that the maximum wage was lifted and the potential to earn the fortune some of them now earn happened. This film was full of jingoistic music and some of the patriotic lines made me cringe; at one point Stan Mortenson said to the captain of the American team at the coin toss 'there's no need to make it a war out there today' and the American captain said 'if it was a war you'd be dead;' totally unnecessary and not funny. The great football/soccer film will be made one day when someone makes the story of Manchester United and the recovery after the Munich air crash which wiped put most of the team.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Let's not blame the director too much

[2/10 · 30 July 2004]

This could have been a great film of its type: good story, good script, great music; adequate acting - but oh that camera work! Good enough for a commercial or an MTV video but in a thriller I would like to see shots last longer than one and a half seconds: some of them are even shorter. The quick editing is used in the action sequences, of course, and whilst fast editing isn't a bad thing it would be nice to give us a break from it once in a while so we could, at least, see some of the action. There are stunt people risking their lives in this movie and the audience doesn't get a chance to see them. The biggest worry would be if too many people like it and it becomes the norm!! There is a scene at the end in a Russian apartment – and I won't give anything away – which is supposed to be a tender scene which doesn't work. No need for that scene; it lacked pace and direction. It's a shame because director Paul Greengrass's previous film, Bloody Sunday, was brilliant. I can't really see the studio letting the director have his head and using so much coverage on the action scenes with multi-camera set ups, hand held cameras, steady-cams and so on and then giving it to an editor and letting him do what he likes, without knowing; so the studio was obviously in on the style of this film from the get go - so let's not blame the director too much.

Nora (2000)

An Impressionistic Portrait of Nora and Jim.

[10/10 · 17 March 2002]

This is a beautiful film. Beautiful in the way it was directed, played and photographed.

Some of the photography, by cinematographer Jean-Francois Robin, could remind the viewer of the most famous of impressionist paintings of the time with couples strolling in the late afternoon fading sun in that magic hour of light when day is slowly but surely turning into night.

The story is essentially about Nora and we are introduced early on to the inspiration of the Michael Furey character from The Dead. This is shown in flashback, just as it is in the original story, as the physically bruised Nora Barnacle leaves Galway for Dublin after a beating from her father.

We are not sure just how far Nora's sexual experiences with the young man went but when she eventually meets James Joyce on that famous original Bloomsday of June 16th 1904, when the Ascot Gold Cup was being won by Throwaway, when Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus were wandering elsewhere around Dublin she does something so memorable and orgasmic to the genius Jim that it plants the seeds of jealousy in his mind that will haunt and taunt their relationship even to the point of James questioning whether their eldest child, Giorgio, is in fact his. If she did that to me she would do it to anybody is his reasoning.

There are some fine multi layered performances by the two leading characters, Ewan McGregor and Susan Lynch, who are ably supported by Peter McDonald as Jim's long suffering but supportive brother Stanny (Stanislaus). With one turn of the head and a slight look in the eye McGregor shows the character's insecurity with the relationship and the return look from Lynch lets him know, and the audience, that he is being unreasonable. Nora believes that James invents the situations to give him fuel for his stories but there is a growing torment of the young artist there with his displays of paranoia about Dublin, his fear of 'things with horns' and his child like panic when he is caught in a thunder storm. These three things and maybe his writing with its stream of consciousness tell us that this, indeed, is not a reasonable man.

There was hardly any mention, however, of the eye problems that James Joyce suffered from throughout his life. His fear of blindness, that he eventually almost reached, might have shown his urgency to get things down on paper. But this is such a small complaint in a wonderful movie so lovingly written and directed by Pat Murphy without one word of James Joyce being used in the script. There are a few little hints, which copyright cannot affect, when we see the few lines: 'Europe, The World, The Universe' which comes from 'A Portrait Of The Artist as a Young Man' and we see Nora save a manuscript from the fire. A manuscript that would be the first draft of 'Portrait' and which eventually saw the light of day as 'Stephen Hero.'