Begs the question what’s the point?

Terrible

The movie starts toward the end of Jesse James’ career as an outlaw and his increasing paranoia with his own gang and the increasing impatience of the authorities for the James Gang to be captured and put out of business.

The plot follows Jesse’s attempts to find out which of his gang members are plotting against him and also focuses on the need for him and his family to constantly move house in order to evade the Pinkerton detectives and others out to claim the reward that had been put on his head.

The main story is about the relationship between Jesse and his cousin Robert Ford. Ford had spent his life hero worshipping Jesse but eventually falls under the influence of the Missouri governor Thomas T. Crittenden. Crittenden presses Ford to assassinate Jesse.

The story is slow moving but full of portent and tension as the date of the assassination gets nearer. The cinematography is excellent and the acting especially of Casey Affleck as Ford is superb. Brad Pitt plays Jesse as a complex character troubled by his past, untrusting and knowing that there is no future for him as the world moves on around him.

This is a film that is definitely worth seeing. Great acting and great direction.

Great animation. The movie is about 20 minutes too long though. It’s definitely worth watching.

In a word…dull.

This film looks like it has been cloned from one of the increasing number of ‘writer has old parent and dysfunctional family but they all get sorted out in the end’ genre.

We don’t care about the characters, we don’t care about the plot and we don’t care about their dysfunctions.

As with previous versions of this film the main character is a writer struggling to get his magnum opus completed. He has a dysfunctional relationship with a Polish woman (a non-character) and he teaches in a university. His sister is a writer trying to get a play performed but in the mean time temps in offices to pay the bills. The siblings have been competing with each other most of their lives but both live under the shadow of bad parenting and this has clouded their ability to be successes. He’s overweight (loser?) and she is having a relationship with a married man (loser?)

The father is losing his marbles and is placed in a (cheap) old people’s home. The place is funded by Medicare so you expect the worse but the orderlies turn out to be very nice and caring.

Through the trials and tribulations of being old and dying the children learn how to turn their lives around and become less dysfunctional.

• About Schmidt (old man film)
• Little Miss Sunshine (writer/old man)
• The Squid and the Whale (writer/old man/dysfunctional family)
• Running with Scissors (writer/old man/dysfunctional family)
• Wonder Boys (writer/dysfunctional people)

zzzzzz…

This movie is well worth watching. I had not heard about the German plot to flood the British and American economies with counterfeit bank notes. It is really interesting to see how people react in the most extreme circumstances and even try to achieve the seeming impossible in the most difficult of circumstances because of the challenge.

The characters are well developed and complex in their motivations. The film looks like it could have been based on a play or could be produced as a theatrical play as the action is based around a small number of people in a confined place.

The story takes place in a concentration camp but the characters are kept in segregated buildings behind a high wooden fence and work under the camp commandant almost as his employees. The only clue to what is happening on the other side comes from the sounds of shouting, shootings and screams.

Inside the counterfeiting ‘workshops’ the prisoners live in relative luxury and work on creating the perfect Dollar bill although death is an ever present threat it is also their motivation to get the job done.

The early part of this movie does nothing to develop any of the characters. There is no back story there is no explanation of anything much just a short pilot briefing and then the pilots take off on a mission into Laos. The mission is top secret as Laos is not officially at war and in fact Vietnama and the USA are not fully at war at this point in history.

Even after Christian Bale gets shot down, captured and put in a prison camp the characters feel distant and it’s hard to care for any of them. The interesting point for me was viewing this 30 years after the Vietnam war and seeing the Viet Cong in a completely different light.

You can see why they treated the American servicemen so poorly in fact everyone is brutal. It is interesting to realise how effective the propaganda of the 60’s and 70’s was (even in the UK) and how our political perceptions and sympathies have changed especially over the time that the Iraq war has been on.

The story gets more interesting in the second half where Bale starts to plan for a breakout. By the end of the movie I felt that it is worth watching and by the end quite enjoyable.

I was not expecting much from this movie but it was lot better than I thought it was going to be. It’s kind of an old fashioned vampire movie but with the 30 days of night twist where the hero has to survive for a month in freezing Alaska while being stalked and chased by a band of nasties.

I am not a big fan of Josh (wooden acting) Hartnett but he seemed to fit in well here as the laid back Sheriff of a small Alaskan town (the most northerly town in America).

The vampires are scary enough and have all the usual characteristics (can’t go out during the day, drink blood etc.) They are a tough bunch though and not easy to dispatch – an axe comes in handy about half way through the film.

If you like traditional (non-slasher) horror films that have a reasonable plot and better than average acting then this is worth a look in.

Breach is an interesting understated movie and worthy of a wider audience. It seems to have bypassed the production company’s marketing department, personally I can’t remember it being released.

The plot revolves around a tracking and capture of the most damaging mole incident in the history of the US secret service. The movie starts with an announcement of the arrest so you know immediately the outcome but then flashes back two months.

Ryan Phillippe plays a newly appointed low level FBI operative who is assigned to baby-sitting the main suspect played by Chris Cooper (in a stunning performance). The movie plots the development of the relationship between Phillipe and Coper until arrest.

For a lot of time the movie plays like a two handed stage play, well written and with well developed characters. I would thoroughly recommend this movie.

This is a movie about three drug addicts who owe their dealer $8000 and have to pay it back quickly, try to rob a house to get the money, bury their dead friend, escape from a satanist cult, get rescued by dwarves and get eveything cleared up in 88 minutes. The characters are funny and you like them from the start of the film. This kind of film has been done a few times but at least this one is funny and however stupid the plot gets you manage to go along with it.

It’s a good Sunday night with nothing to watch on TV. Give it a go you might like it more than you think…