Boldly going

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: 101 minutes of Kirk and his crew digging themselves out of a hole.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: is basically Galactia 1980 done right-- people from the future time-travel back to California in the Eighties in an invisible spaceship, hook up with a daffy girl local, hand out formulae for miracle products, and engage in funny scenarios due to their failure to understand local culture, only in this movie the characters are likeable, the situations and their attempts to get out of them uncontrived. Also, after the Captain Ahab theme of Star Trek II, it's nice to have a movie from the point of view of the whale. The only problem is the last five minutes when all the charges against the crew are dropped, Kirk busted back to Captain, a new Enterprise is built (funny, the Federation were scrapping it just one film ago) and everyone flies off into the sunset with the reset button firmly pressed.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: Reportedly the film which nearly scuppered the franchise, and viewing like a catalogue of everything not to do in a Star Trek movie. Don’t use “The Way to Eden” as your reference point, don’t introduce random relatives for Spock, don’t have cutesy scenes of Kirk, Spock and McCoy singing around a campfire, don’t have knockoffs of the Star Wars cantina sequence… and if you’re going to have a charismatic preacher as your antagonist, then please, make his message actually interesting and not some kind of Californian encounter-group shibboleth about acknowledging your pain and having a group hug. Also, I’m all for celebrating the sensuality of the older woman, but having Nichelle Nichols do a striptease really doesn’t fall into that category.

Star Trek VI: Witty and intelligent finale to the original movie series, building on the fact that the original series was basically a metaphor for Cold War politics and doing the collapse of Communism in space, complete with jokes about Fukuyama’s “the end of history” comment and a space-Chernobyl incident. Some complain about the classical misquotations scattered throughout, but for me they worked; it starts out as the Klingons apparently misunderstanding Shakespeare, then morphs to the Klingons actually doing a kind of postmodern reinterpretation of Shakespearian themes, and before long Spock, Chekhov and even Kirk are getting in on the postmodern action, with Spock claiming Sherlock Holmes as a literal ancestor, and Kirk acknowledging his Peter Pan syndrome with a quote from J.M. Barrie. Kim Cattrall guest stars as a Vulcan calculated to induce ponn farr in anything within a fifty-mile radius.

Movie count for 2011: 24

Mad Dogs and Teenagers

Dogville: Tragic reflection on the bad side of human nature by Lars von Trier. Nicole Kidman plays a fugitive from gangsters who hides out in a small mountain town, paying back the villagers by helping them out with their work; the villagers, faced with mounting pressure to turn her in on one side, and the temptation of having a ready source of labour on the other, gradually ratchet up the exploitation until it turns into outright abuse. The ending turns the whole thing into a philosophical discussion on the nature of forgiveness which is not dissimilar to that in Bad Lieutenant, but taking the opposite narrative tack: because the person called on to forgive would, in the same situation, have acted no differently to the person they are asked to forgive, they cannot, in the end, do so.

Also, what is it with Scandinavian directors and dogs?

You Don’t Know Jack: Biopic of euthanasist Jack Kevorkian, which is both sympathetic to Kevorkian’s initial idealistic reasons for assisting the suicide of the terminally ill and/or incurably disabled, but also paints his final trial and conviction for murder as the result of his being emotionally traumatised by assisting at all these deaths until, as the trial judge states, he wanted to be stopped.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Having managed to get through the 1980s without seeing this, I thought it was time to give it a go. It turned out to be a surprisingly witty and accessible teen movie, full of well-timed physical comedy, whose ultimate message is: be true to yourself, and don’t obsess about what other people do or think.

Movie Count for 2011: 20

Eye of the Beholder

Black Beauty (1971): The original book was an early animal-rights polemic, told through the picaresque journey of a horse as he goes from a pleasant rural life on a country estate to a harder life as a London cabhorse, before finally being rescued when close to death from abuse. The film loses most of this thematic progression, instead giving us an adventure series and inserting sequences where, for instance, the eponymous horse spends a while with the biggest set of gypsy stereotypes this side of a Channel 4 reality programme, as a circus horse on the Continent (I'm not making this up), and as a warhorse in Afghanistan, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake (again, not kidding-- he's directly responsible for at least two deaths even before going to the Hindu Kush). This vignette-style treatment also leads to interesting narrative strands being violently cut off (what, for instance, will happen when the girlfriend of Beauty's soldier owner finds out that her father's needling the lad into going off to war lead directly to his brutal death in combat? We never learn). The horses are beautiful, the foals are cute and the landscapes dramatic, and the ending does get somewhere close to the bittersweet tone of the novel (despite a shoehorned-in and pointless cameo for Anna Sewell), but it's not really worth setting the Skybox for.

Movie count for 2011: 17

Crimson faced

The Crimson Kimono: Not-very-good late-fifties noir-lite B-pic; a stripper who had been planning a Japanese-themed act is killed, an artist who did a painting of her is threatened, the team of police detectives assigned to the case (one European-American, one Japanese-American) both fall for the artist, and it all ends with the world's slowest high-speed chase and the world's most laboured apology. Interesting mainly for its portrayal of Japanese-American (and to a lesser extent Korean-American) culture: at a time when Asians tend to get stereotyped as evil inscrutables or accented comedy-figures, the Japanese characters here are portrayed matter-of-factly as sportsmen, parents, teachers and war heroes (the Korean War naturally-- WWII remains the elephant in the room), and likewise their culture is not something impenetrable by Caucasians (e.g. the Caucasian detective is a kendo enthusiast). The religious diversity of such communities is also unproblematically portrayed (the minor characters include a Japanese Buddhist priest and a Korean Catholic nun). At the end, too, the Japanese detective gets the (Caucasian) girl. It's just a shame this couldn't have happened in a better movie.

Movie count for 2010: 16

Life lessons

Le Diner des Cons: The diner in question is a supper party where the participants are all supposed to bring along an idiot; the amoral protagonist finds a prize one, who turns out to be a sort of demented and less-likeable Monsieur Hulot. The escalating series of resulting hilarious disasters teaches him some painful but true lessons about compassion, and very possibly gets him a tax audit.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Still the best of the Star Trek films, wisely eschewing the Enterprise-fetishism of last outing in favour of a story about learning to accept bitter truths. Kirk is portrayed as a man perpetually afraid of confronting his own aging and death, and having to do so over the course of the film, ending up sadder but wiser. Khan, meanwhile, has a contrasting story as a man unable to let go of his insane desire for revenge on Kirk, and as such winds up wasting his own and his followers' lives.

Hoax: Based-on-a-true-story film about Clifford Irving's famous faked "autobiography" of Howard Hughes. Although played for comedy-drama and disowned by Irving himself, the film does raise the question of what is truth: if one can write a fiction indistinguishable from reality, does this make it true? Worth watching in a double bill with F for Fake.

Movie Count for 2011: 15

Not so edgy

Edge of Darkness: Takes an intelligent, paranoid, gripping tale of corruption in business and government, and turns it into a banal whistleblowing thriller. So banal, in fact, that I really don't want to waste any more time reviewing it than I have to. Suffice it to say that it's a good thing that it seems to have more or less sunk without trace.

Movie count for 2010: 12 (don't worry, I've got a Tati box set, two Kurosawas and Le Diner des Cons somewhere about the house, so there is much better to come)

Seal of approval

The Seventh Seal: Ninety-minute-long metaphor for the brevity and absurdity of life and the randomness and inevitability of death.

The Big Heat: Film noir ostensibly about a good cop trying to put away a well-connected mobster amid a web of corruption. However, it's directed by Fritz Lang, who can't resist putting a slight shadow of ambiguity over said cop's morality-- specifically, whether the vengeful actions engaged in by a gangster's wronged girlfriend at the climax of the movie were her own idea, or whether the cop manipulated her into it.

Goodfellas: Sort of like a cross between "Mean Streets" and "Casino," a morality tale which follows the career of a mobster from his first entry into crime in the 1950s through to the catastrophic implosion of his criminal network in the 1980s. Predictably good performances all around, but particular credit to Joe Pesci, who is simultaneously funny and terrifying.

Movie count for 2011: 11

Fridge moment

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Possibly my second-favourite film of the series, because it does for the 1950s what Raiders did for the 1930s, presenting us with a kind of collective unconscious of the decade while playfully riffing through the films of the period. An example: the Nuking of the Crystal Fridge not only plays like a knowing parody of the nuclear-test footage I reviewed earlier (watch them and you'll see what I mean), but also reads less like an accurate portrayal of the nuclear tests than like the contemporary mythologising of them: there was no "town" in the desert, but certain government propaganda films made out that there was, and hiding in the fridge is if anything less daft than some of Bert the Turtle Says Duck and Cover's suggestions for how to survive a nuclear blast. Also continues some of the playful self-parody of Crusade, for instance Indy referring to the Bhagavad Gita inaccurately as the "Hindu Bible" (suggesting he knows a lot less about Hinduism than he thinks). The film also has a huge unacknowledged debt to Quatermass and the Pit. My three main problems with it are that: 1) the Cate Blanchett character should have continued for another few films (heck, scrap Indy and give Spalko her own series-- Irina Spalko and the Men Who Stare at Goats, now that's a sequel); 2) the father issues are much more conventionally played than in Crusade, and 3) I still think models are better than CGI. Though it mostly worked OK here.

Movie count for 2011: 8

Parenting issues

Juno: Non-judgmental, unsentimental yet upbeat tale of teenage pregnancy, which consequently felt believable. The film doesn't sentimentalise Juno's condition (binge-eating, hormonal surges, constipation, plus the most amazingly distended pregnancy prosthetic I've seen in a movie), but at the same time doesn't make it out to be some kind of punishment for her misdeeds (Juno's parents are disappointed in her but supportive, and the ending of the film implies that Juno will go on to an otherwise-normal late adolescence and early adulthood), while adoption and blended families are given a good press. The gradual unfolding of the characters of the adoptive parents, also, is touchingly done, and the whole thing is a portrayal of flawed, but generally good, human beings which, well, the whole family can enjoy.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: I was looking forward to this as it was my favourite of the trilogy when I was a kid, but found it a little disappointing this time round. Although much, much better than the second film, it is mostly a rehash of the first, with a few changes rung on it for variety. It's a good film for a game of spot-the-thesp (can you find Ronald Lacey among the Nazis?) and has some good lines; even the father issues worked fairly well as Spielberg plays them almost like knowing self-parody (although there were one or two cloying bits towards the end). However the film referencing is much thinner on the ground (mostly coming in the witty casting of an actress with a strong resemblance to Lauren Bacall as the treacherous Nazi Dr Schneider), and most of it felt fairly tick-the-boxes to me (quest for Judaeo-Christian mythological object? Check. Nazis played by Brits? Check. Dieselpunk-style souped-up Thirties techno-porn? Check. High-larious scene indicating what a terrible teacher Indy is? Check). Still, I've spent worse evenings. Next: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Nuclear Fridge.

Movie count for 2011: 7

The Repeated Meme: A Christmas Carol

Must... resist... temptation to make "Jump the Shark" jokes...

Idea Proposed and Used to Death in the Davies Era: Christmas specials. Gratuitously Christmassy Christmas specials. With snow. Which, unfortunately, look really stupid when they get repeated on BBC3 in July.
Central Premise Recycled From: Go on, guess. Though they're also ripping off Blade Runner visually. Oh, and Torchwood's episode "To the Last Man" (look it up, I'm not summarizing it for you). And "Voyage of the Damned", of all things. And Amy and Rory's outfits are clearly Make Do and Mend.
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: Where to start, where to start...? The Doctor forming a relationship with an adorable moppet in the past and also with the same moppet as a grownup in the future, conversing with a TV picture that's somehow connected with the changing timeline, the Doctor rewriting the story as he goes along by nipping back and forth along his own timeline, airborne sea-life.
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: None actually. I think they may have done with that bit.
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: Amy and the Doctor appeal to Sardick's Wuv for Abigail to Save the Day.
Star Wars Bit: Freezing someone to pay off debts, plus Abigail's blue hologram-recording.
Nostalgia UK: Space Dickensiana.
Tennant Line: Sardick says "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry" to his younger self.
Murray Gold's Festive #1: Well, if you're going to hire Katherine Jenkins, you may as well get value for money by having her sing something vaguely classical.
Inside Joke List: A Tom Baker scarf on Matt Smith, plus photos of Matt Smith visiting the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower.
Teeth!: On the Shark!
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Didn't have to guess at this one, as Forbidden Planet London's already got a Christmas box set, consisting of.... Amy, the Doctor, and the Tardis. Seriously? You couldn't give us a lousy Michael Gambon in a bowtie, to say nothing of a pull-the-string-and-she-sings Katherine Jenkins? Or a half a sonic screwdriver? Oh well, go to The Entertainer or Tesco or wherever, spend £1 on a plastic shark and a Santa-and-his-sleigh-set, take five minutes to customise it and you've got your own Christmas Doctor Who toy.
Something Gets Redesigned: Sardick's life.

Goats and Cheese

The Men who Stare at Goats: Valiant attempt to make a fictional story of an interesting documentary/book about the US Army's for-real attempts to research the existence of, and possible military uses of, the paranormal. The action focuses on George Clooney as a burnt-out former member of a unit set up in the 1980s to develop the psychic powers of soldiers, now wandering through Iraq convinced he's on some kind of mission, with Ewan McGregor in tow. Where the film fell down was: 1) it didn't go far enough in highlighting the absurdity of military culture and the so-called post-war situation in Iraq-- occasionally I was reminded of Buffalo Soldiers, for instance the sequence where two groups of civilian contractors accidentally start a firefight with each other, but it never got as good as Buffalo Soldiers in that area; 2) Clooney really does have psychic powers, where it might have been more interesting to continually play on the idea that really he doesn't, but he's convinced he does; and 3) the filmmakers clearly wanted the story to have a happy ending and wedged one into it, when in fact the ending of the story is clearly a sad one.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Plotwise and conceptwise, pretty good, and with an interesting Freudian subtext (as the child-entity VGER moves from the oral-anal stage, in which it is represented by a suspiciously sphincter-like space anomaly, to the stage of adult sexual relationships through taking human form and joining with Commander Decker); had this been an extended episode of Star Trek: TOS, I'd've rated it as outstanding. Its big problem as a movie is that it's long and boring, with huge swaths of it divided between sequences which seem to be an attempt to copy 2001 without really understanding what 2001 is about, and sequences which amount to, basically, spaceship-porn. It's also the start of the series' fetishization (and yes, I use the term deliberately) of the Enterprise, which always bothered me a bit; in TOS, there was no real indication that the Enterprise was anything particularly special, but from here on there seems to be this idea that the Enterprise is somehow this really exciting, really special ship which everybody would give their right arms to be on. Sorry, not buying it. Next up, The Wrath of Khan.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: An almost total inversion of Raiders of the Lost Ark, being dumb, crass, racist, sexist, and not as funny as it thinks it is. There are far fewer knowing filmic references and, apart from the opening sequence's pastiche of Gold Diggers of 1933, also, and what I suspect is an attempt at referencing Black Narcissus later on, most of them are pretty banal and obvious. The religious side of the plot was also pretty crass, treating Hinduism as a kind of tribal superstition rather than a sophisticated world faith, despite an attempt to save it at the end by suggesting that the god Shiva exists and is pissed off at the mad Kali-cultists Indy is up against. The racism I found genuinely offensive, starting with the gurning sinister "Orientals" in Shanghai and going on through a corrupt and decadent India where people apparently eat live snakes, beetles and monkey brains while enslaving peasant children. Even on a plot level it didn't really hang together, with the opening sequence in Shanghai having no connection to the rest of the story bar providing a reason why Indy is traveling around with a dumb blonde and an eleven-year-old street urchin, and with set pieces which don't so much advance the plot as (to leap ahead a couple of films) nuke the fridge. Remember, this film was directed by the same man who directed Munich.

Movie count for 2011: 5

Raiders

The Social Network: Film about the development of Facebook, seen through the subsequent lawsuits between the various parties involved. It both a) reminded me a lot of Oxford (the complicated Darwinian patterns of alliances and fallings-out between the overly intelligent and the overprivileged) and b) helped me understand the appeal of Facebook more (it's all about giving people the university experience, by which they mean dating, embarrassment, parties and social one-upmanship). A lot more fascinating than a film about a website ought to be-- but then the website itself is more fascinating than it ought to be too, so that's appropriate.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: A postmodern masterpiece, and early example of proto-dieselpunk. Lucas and Spielberg go beyond simply pastiching 1930s adventure serials to creating some kind of perfect distilled essence of the 1930s adventure serial, tapping into the technololgical and social fantasies of that generation (producing a Spruce Goose and Nazi delta-wing plane which actually work, and playfully referencing the decade's obsessions with Egypt and Nepal) while knowingly referencing the films and novels of the era. Also, for a film focused on the Ark of the Covenant, manages surprisingly well to steer clear of religious issues; Judaism and Sunday School both get only passing mentions, Islam none at all (although at least one of the hero characters is implied to be a Muslim). For a film that's thirty years old, too, the effects still stand up well, supporting my hypothesis that a well-done physical effect lasts better than CGI. Next week, The Temple of Doom.

Movie count for 2011: 2

The Repeated Meme: How did we do?

Those of you who follow this blog's Doctor Who: The Repeated Meme series will recall that every episode, I made a prediction on the Item Most Likely To Wind Up as a Toy. Now that it's Christmas sales season, let's see how well I did:

The Eleventh Hour: I didn`t exactly predict that one, as the sonic screwdriver and Matt Smith dolls were released almost as soon as it premiered. Nice to see them adding Prisoner Zero to the line, though.

The Beast Below: I predicted Smilers. We got Smilers.

Victory of the Daleks: I predicted Daleks (no prizes for guessing) though I didn`t expect the Bracewell figure-- and they did include the cool-looking Dalek as well as the fake-looking ones.

Time of Angels: I predicted, obviously, angels. We got them, in three different flavours.

Flesh and Stone: I predicted glow-in-the-dark Crack in the Universe stickers for your wall. Don`t know if it counts, but there was a Facebook fad for adding the Crack in the Universe to your profile picture for a while.

Amy`s Choice: I predicted a limited-edition Amy Pond Up The Duff. Not yet, but it`s early days. In the meantime, you can make your own with a regular Amy Pond figure and some plasticine.

Vampires of Venice: I predicted either a generic vampire girl or else Rosanna. Surprise, it`s Francesco.

The Hungry Earth: I predicted Silurians with noses and honkers. We got not one, but two. Silurians, that is. Not honkers. There were four of those. Ahem, I`d better stop.

Cold Blood: I predicted Silurian ray-guns. Alas, thus far `tis not to be, which is a shame as they were really the only good thing about the design of the Silurians with Noses and Honkers.

Vincent and the Doctor: I predicted the Invisible Chicken Monster. However, as it`s invisible, we`ll never know if they released it or not.

The Lodger: I predicted nothing. We got nothing, and mercifully no six-inch articulated James Cordens.

The Pandorica Opens: I predicted a coin bank based on the Pandorica. Thus far, I`m still waiting, though the MP3 CD cases which come with the Pandorica Figure Collection do come together to form a Pandorica-like box which I suppose you could keep things in.

The Big Bang: I predicted a stone Dalek; in fact, we got a stone Roman soldier and a stone Cyberman.

Madre de Dios

Treasure of the Sierra Madre: Three men go prospecting for gold, find it, and also find that, out in the stark wilderness and with the temptation of incredible riches in front of them, the basest impulses, most venal suspicions, and deepest greed can emerge. Two of the men are ultimately saved because what they want the gold for is essentially benign purposes-- the old prospector wants to have a comfortable retirement, the young one wants to buy an orchard and start a family-- and both lose the gold, but get their wishes. The third one, Dobbs, played creepily well by Humphrey Bogart, wants the gold for creature comforts and to be able to lord it over other people, and he ends up getting all the gold, but losing his life.

Movie count for 2010: 130

Comedy of Errors

The Human Comedy: 1943 Mickey Rooney film which I saw through no fault of my own on TCM. It's an example of that kind of American nostalgic-picture-of-village-life genre, along the lines of Our Town, Meet me in St Louis or To Kill a Mockingbird, though unfortunately lacking the bite of all three of these. Rooney is the middle male sibling of a small-town Irish family with a deceased father (who narrates, irritatingly, throughout); the younger one appears to have some sort of mental disorder, the older one is in the Army and quite visibly destined to die heroically in action before the end of the story, and Rooney spends his time failing to pay attention in class, winning school track and field meets, and Learning About Life through his after-school job as a telegram delivery boy. Mainly worth watching for the rather peculiar lesbian subtext revolving around Rooney's sister and her best friend, and there's a cute if sappy big-up for the Alternative Family at the end of the film as the Irish clan, by implication, take in the older sibling's now-disabled army buddy as a kind of adopted child. Oh, and there's a before-they-were-famous cameo from Robert Mitchum, of all people. Relentlessly sentimental and propagandistic, but peculiarly fascinating in that car-crash way.

For some reason this won an Academy Award; clearly talent was rationed that year.

Movie count for 2010: 129

What She Drewe

Tamara Drewe: Stephen Frears continues his exploration of different aspects of British life with an adaptation of a Posy Simmonds comic which continues her exploration of the foibles and hypocrisies of the literary and academic worlds. The film tells the story of a journalist (Tamara) who returns to her native village and finds herself at the centre of a tacit conflict between the reality of rural village life (represented by two poisonously bored teenage troublemakers, and a cute hunky farmhand) and fanciful interpretations of it by city-dwellers (represented by a literary couple with a deteriorating relationship, and the various writers and lecturers attending a writers' retreat at their farmhouse). The film portrays this conflict well, and through excellent casting and design captures the feel of the comic impeccably. Unfortunately I didn't think the film was quite as successful in portraying the pretentiousness of Tamara and her London boyfriend (which the comic does by interweaving excerpts of Tamara's facile Polly-Filla-esque newspaper column with her experiences).

Movie count for 2010: 128 (still debating whether to review the Mickey Rooney film I sort of watched the other night).

Top Tati

Playtime: A wonderful movie about the essential inhumanity of modernism, which celebrates its destruction at the hands of simple human fallibility. Bear with me on this. Tati serves up a series of coldly beautiful Sixties Modernist cityscapes called "Paris"-- an airport, an office building, an exhibition centre, a block of flats, a restaurant-- and then into this throws a simple man in an overcoat, who manages to hurl whole systems into chaos simply by walking through the wrong door at the wrong time, and yet who also never quite manages to overcome the sheer weight of the surrounding bureaucracy. The screen is always relentlessly busy with action, and Tati never actually uses any of the conventional cinematic cues to "tell" you what you should be watching, so it can be difficult to realise what's actually going on in any scene until you figure it out for yourself. But then again, perhaps the sheer randomness of it all is the point.

Movie count for 2010: 127.

Jungle VIP

The Jungle Book (1967): Not the best Disney cartoon feature, but in its defense it's trying to weave together a coherent plot out of a series of loosely-linked short stories, and also trying to make a crowd-pleasing kid-friendly film out of a pair of books which are, essentially, about colonialism and the loss of innocence, and rather disturbing in places. The two main points in its favour are a) Baloo, who is really seriously cute, and b) the "I Wanna Be Like You" song and dance number, with jitterbugging monkeys and a scat-singing orangotang. The close-harmonising vultures based on The Beatles, though, have not exactly stood the test of time.

Catch Me If You Can: Reasonably good Spielberg film; the father issues are strong with this one, but it does actually work pretty well in this case, as Spielberg interprets the case of Frank Abagnale Jr. as being about a young man with an inadequate father; he first denies and then tries to make up for his father's inadequacy through impersonating authority figures and engaging in successful cheque fraud (as contrasted with his father's failed tax evasion), but he only achieves closure by recognising, in Tom Hanks' FBI agent, his true spiritual father and giving up a life of crime for an even more lucrative legal job.

The caveat, though, is that the whole thing is relentlessly cheery and feelgood, even though I kept having fridge moments afterwards about the people damaged by Abagnale's schemes. What about the college girls he, at one point, duped into believing they'd won a competition to be stewardesses and then, apparently, dumped in an airport somewhere? What about his fiancee, who accepted him in good faith as being someone he wasn't? Or her father, who helped him through his bar exams and took him on into his law firm? We're never actually shown any of this, and yes, this does bother me, in that it means we're continually being given an image of Abagnale as a likeable, lovable sort, and never asked to consider the harm he's done beyond the financial.

Movie count for 2010: 125 (both Spielberg and Disney in the same post, the very evocation of the Hollywood commercial juggernaut.)

The Potentially Good, the Sadistic and the Mildly Repellant

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Woot, I finished the "Dollar" trilogy before the end of the year! Despite coming third in order, this film is actually a prequel to the other two: firstly, it is only at the end of the film that the Man With No Name gains his trademark poncho, which he wears in the other two films, and also only then that he becomes genuinely The Good. Likewise, there is nothing to entirely deny the possibility that Lee van Cleef's Angel Eyes (The Bad) is in fact Colonel Mortimer from For a Few Dollars More: in the latter film, Mortimer admits to having done some pretty bad things in earlier years; Angel Eyes is an officer in the Union army; Morricone's score plays the Mortimer clock-chime theme over the climactic standoff between the three protagonists of TGTBATU; and, although Angel Eyes is apparently shot dead at the end of the film, it's possible that he was in fact only severely wounded, and survived to team up with the Man With No Name years later (though the name "Mortimer" suggests the living dead, and it wouldn't be the only time a character in a Leone Western turned out to be a vengeful ghost; not insignificantly, the hoard of gold which the protagonists are after is buried in a grave marked UNKNOWN, also linking the Man With No Name with wealth and death). Finally, The Ugly, a comedy Mexican bandit of dubious loyalty, can be seen to foreshadow the more serious Mexican bandits of the other two films.

TGTBATU is a good film which would be an excellent one if it could lose about thirty minutes; part of its conceit is to weave the action in and around the American Civil War, which, while it nicely contrasts the absurdity, brutality and venality of the protagonists' pursuit of riches with the absurdity, brutality and venality of war and allows Leone to explore his trademark bleakness-of-the-West theme (never before has a Western included so many amputees), also leads to a couple of set pieces which slow the main action down far too much. If you're rewatching this, fast-forward through them and you'll probably enjoy it more.

Movie count for 2010: 123

Gangsters Hieronymous

In Bruges: Contemporary low-budget Britflick in which two Irish gangsters, following a hit gone wrong, are ordered by their boss to hole up in Bruges. The Cultured One thinks this is fantastic and goes on a tour of the canals; the Rough and Ready One is bored and goes off in pursuit of a pretty local woman. It sounds like the setup for a thriller-comedy, and indeed it starts off being one, but as the story progresses the revelations get darker and the scenery gets weirder, ending with Bruges transformed into Hieronymous Bosch's Last Judgment as the consequences of the botched crime and the strict moral code of the boss bring everything to a surreal climax. It's set at Christmastime, too, making it perfect holiday viewing if you're already sick of syrupy family films.

Movie Count for 2010: 122