Juno review

The first time I saw this film, gulping down popcorn unil my veins were all slathered in a thick layer of caramel and my insulin had hoistered the white flag of sugar-busting surrender, I actually quite liked it. In an industry drenched in gun-toting gym buffs, plastic cast whiny actresses and sequel churning producers, indie sweet films are occasionally an appreciated viewing at the cinema.

However, having watched it a few times now, it now seems to be a little too try-hard in the quirk and wit department, making the up-the-buff main character as believable as a playboy bunny claiming she would marry only for love. And although I'm not wagging my finger at the acting abilities of Ellen Page, she does play out more like a dictaphone to the script rather than a smart-arse up the sprout teenager. 

And as to the quirkiness, well, its like the odd neighbour who wears her cat-hair-smothered blanket as a dress, whines to you about the misalignment of the planets afffecting her aura and knocks on your door at midnight to see if she could burrow some jojoba oil for an emergency late-night ritual. Amusing at first, but after a few more knocks on the door and copious lectures about neglecting your inner zen, she suddently becomes butt-clenchingly irritating.

Neanderthal Book Review

Neanderthal - John Darton

Sure, I've burrowed my nose plenty in the crinkle-cut pages of the big daddy classics, and sure, I've wormed my way through the award-drenched paperbacks like a full blown social retard possessed, but that doesn't stop me declaring that this 'low brow' caveman romper-stomper novel as essential reading as the weather forecast on your wedding day.

And even though my friends aren't fully convinced that this is a literary gem slumped in a sack of talentless dirt, I'm not taking it to heart, since they prefer to read the chick lit pulp that is spewed out on a daily basis about unsatisfied women daydreaming about Manolo Blahnik high heels, carbohydrates and stereotypical European rose-swishing casanovas.

Look at it this way, amigo. Any book with the opening line involving a character resting his AK-47 against a tee trunk to take a leak by the campsite is seven different shades of special.

Scarface Review

My attitude to this film can be simply compared to my dislike of pineapples - despite there not really being an intelligent blog-worthy reason as to why they make my face scrunch up in blatant old-school distaste, I still avoid them like diseased German bean sprouts from the supermarket shelf.

And whilst I'm neither a heavy handed Al Pacino basher who stamps, seals and delivers him as an overrated bunch of twitching muscle fibres nor a member of his loyal butt-kissing brigade, I'm still cradling the belief that his 'bling-bling' gangster perfomance is far and gone from the best in his celluloid history.

Plus, the whole film seems as tacky as five dime hooker's pyrex outfit and resembles more of a hyperviolent rap music video than it does a 'critic's little darling' gangster classic.  Or maybe that's just me.

No Country For Old Men

This is probably the greatest thing I've seen at the cinema, this side of a man of overly generous proportions chomping down a tub of popcorn faster than you could utter out 'heart disease'.

And whilst it's not the stone-cold history-based definition of a Western by everyday standards, its tinged with the genre's glare anyway.

Sure, it doesn't have the feather-in-their-cap Indians, cattle towns and burlesque dancers flapping their legs to the tune of a broken piano as bar fight brawls out, but...it does have the parched lonely landscapes, the north-off-the-border mexican standoffs, the squinting yoga-wisdom sheriff, the pressurised-canister-flaring shoot outs, the coin-flipping hit man, the 'Delia-Smith-meets-a-seventies-lower-division-goalkeeper' hairstyles and a large enough dashering of cowboy hats to make a Blackpool hen party proud - had the cowboy hats been pink, tacky and covered with glittery fluff that is.

Childhood favourite film

The childhood chunk of that phrase is deceptive as it assumes that since I've outgrown my Barney pyjamas and my pink fluffy bunny slippers,  my tastes have matured like a fine slab of cheese and I'm now dipping my toes in subterranean depths of sophistication found only in arthouse critics and chronic intellectuals.

Heck no. I'm still several shades of simple minded and can still weane out an indecent amount entertainment from toddler cartoons and happy-meal toys.

But considering how my friends envisage my childhood involving barbie decapirations, elastic band catapults and a chronic stockpile of bruises, scratches and grazes, I always get arched eyebrows and snorts when I declare that my childhood favourite film isn't some mind-warping masochistic torture-porn flick but rather the sugar-coated South-America frump: 'Romancing The Stone' - involving flaky latinos, shrieking parka-wearing saga-scribing city frumps, bird collecting jungle hobos and a script that I have engrained in the deepest, darkest core of my brain.

La Haine Review

I was expecting a chavtastic ode-to-violence with yobby looking teenagers drenched in tracksuits, speaking with 'tape played in reverse' style accents and punching their way through their pubescent emotions by smearing their knuckles against one each other like butter

But expectations aside, it was actually quite good.
As in end-credits-menu-replay-end-credits good. As in drag-my-posterior-in-front-of-the-computer-monitor-to-seal-my-lack-of-social-life-into-a-blog-post good. As in screw-the-recession-I'll-buy-it-anyway good. As in you-probably-get-the-gist-by-now good.

Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz (the sugar sweet quirkball in Amelie and the man shrivelling behind the camera in shame in hollywood classics such as 'Gothika' and 'Babylon AD'), the film manages to steer well clear of the usual brainless pitfalls of the 'chavsploitation' genre by not offering a pre-packaged bundle of cliches and morality-lessons ram-jammed down your throat.

Vincent Cassel by the way, is treading thespian gold in this film and is wearing his role like a fat chick wears spandex.

Song Of The Day

The Cynical Chemist

You're probably wondering what it is that I do outside of the comfortable walls of cyberspace when I'm not keyboard bashing, blog scribing and gazing at the world through my cynical eyes of hate.

Well, I wilt away my hours in a chemistry laboratory; scribing and keyboard bashing whilst gazing at the world through my cynical eyes of hate in a lab coat.

The Long Goodbye

Rating ****

Whenever I read a Raymond Chandler novel, Philipe Marlowe always whistles to the tune of the whisky-glugging, chain smoking pulp detective prototype; the type that you automatically envisage with a raised trenchcoat collar, perched against the lamp post gazing sluggishly at the smoke trail from his cigarette in the flickers of the street light.

And whilst Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep decides to play along to this image, Robert Altman decides to upturn the idea of it all by chiselling down the verbal slinging matches between the characters to a slow drawl in the piercing glaze of the Californian sun.

The character itself is rebrandished by Elliout Gould as a scruff-ball cynical detective whose words don't so much skim the surface of his tongue as stumble out in a stream of mutterings. And alienated by a city of perfectly manicured boulevards and health-conscious hedonistic yoga-frumps, he meanders through a strew of murdered wives, topless brownie-craving neighbourhood hippies, actress-impersonating attendants, cats with hyperefined taste buds and coke-bottle itchy gangsters.

All tuned to the whipsy notes of John Williams theme song played again and again a la Sam.

The Devil's Backbone Quote

What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.