Author: Alex Doenau

“I’ll tie your shoe.”

Robert De Niro has, in The Good Shepherd, made a movie that fails to engage with its audience for the entirety of its near three hour run time. I don't have exacting standards, but my standards are slightly greater than this.

The fault does not lie at the feet of Matt Damon, but rather at those of his character: here he has been written into a corner as a man with no emotions. It's easy to portray no emotions on the silver screen, but it's infinitely more difficult to make someone care about these lack of emotions … even if the film itself explores the cause of this lack.

“We’ll always have Berlin.”

Steven Soderbergh is one of those directors who believes in doing new and exciting things in film, like releasing the same film simultaneously on DVD, the internet and in cinemas and seeing which one no one will see the least.

The exciting thing he had in mind for The Good German was to make it exactly the same way that a movie would be made in the forties: cinematography, sound and set design like the greats. Apparently his contract stipulated that in order to make The Good German he had to append the end of Casablanca to it.

Clearly he had mixed success.

“Kill the Queen.”

Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are clearly big fans of movies and, with two under their sleeves and also a TV series that I’ve never seen, they’ve demonstrated themselves capable of working across several genres.

In my efforts to become less lazy about watching my DVDs, I finally cracked out Shaun of the Dead in honour of Hot Fuzz turning out so well. Shaun of the Dead is truly the ultimate in rom zom coms!

“Swan!”

I’ll keep this brief, because Hot Fuzz is like a gift: it’s not as fun if you don’t open it yourself. This is a film that straddles genres, as Shaun of the Dead did before it, and the result is something by turns contemplative and hilarious.

“The once and future King”

Bobby opens with a scrolling text that makes Robert Francis Kennedy out to be a golden god, the only man who could have set America down the right path. It’s laughable in its propagandistic shouting from the rooftops.

The story of Bobby has always been more the tale of its creation … Emilio Estevez was advised by Charlie Sheen to keep on writing after he hit a wall, and people kept on cropping up who were connected to the day that Kennedy was shot … than of its actual cinematic qualities. In interviews, Estevez truly did believe that Kennedy could have brought about the perfect America. It’s almost scary.

Fortunately, it rises above its limitations in its actual execution. There’s far too much in the way of “meaningful speeches”, as Estevez is not near the orator that Kennedy clearly was, but it becomes a movie about people connected to an event and actually lets the audience make up their own minds about Kennedy through Kennedy’s own words.

In space, nothing good ever happens. Really, I don’t know why you’d bother.

Science fiction from Danny Boyle, the director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. That simple description of Sunshine may be enough to sell it to quite a few people.

Some wonder why more SF doesn’t get made and, beyond the fact of the high budgets expected to make them look good, there is a simple explanation: space is bleak. Sunshine gives hope, but ultimately all is an endless vacuum.

Trailer Warning: Don’t watch the trailer for this movie, as it apparently spoils many of the pertinent plot elements.


“Parasite”

I appreciate what Heroes was trying to do here, but it didn’t all work. Still, good stuff and a couple of things that I had predicted but was not quite sure of.

At an even 20 different character scenes, it was a busy episode.

Perhaps a small, lady’s spoilér