Wednesday, August 27, 2008

FILLMORE DISCOS 11

After a wretched run of consecutive losers, faith is partially restored with Isabel Coixet's Elegy, and fully with the emphatically memorable The Fall.

Elegy
(****)
contemplative, thought-provoking, and ultimately moving drama - I'd now very much like to read the novel it's based upon, Philip Roth's The Dying Animal

Baby Mama (*)
oh my fucking god - now I have officially hit rock bottom and actually feel soiled having sat right through this excruciating comedy about babies and motherhood

The Fall
(*****)
this remake of Yo Ho Ho, an old Bulgarian movie, is a masterpiece: stunning to look at, and full of wonderful symbolism and metaphor; yet really at its heart lies a devastatingly simple tale of a relationship between a young actor, paralysed in a stunt gone wrong and now wishing to end his own life in hospital, and fellow patient Alexandria, a truly extraodinary little girl who becomes besotted and captivated by his extravagant and mythological story-telling - Catinca Untaru's performance as the little girl is one of the most memorable and magical things I've seen since Judy Garland in the Wizard Of Oz (yes, it's that good)

The Go-Getter (**)
an annoyingly derivative movie that has indie film student written all over it - the score, the scripting, the acting, the photography, the lot

The Strangers (**)
typical modern horror thriller: promising set-up that rapidly becomes silly and far-fetched - The Strangers uses all the audiovisual clichés of the genre not just once but over and over and over again to the point of viewer exhaustion; conclusion: send the director back to film school to study Hitchcock

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