RolyUK Reviews

Borat (2006)

Total comic genius

[10/10 · 14 November 2006]

This film takes the 'comedy of awkwardness / embarrassment' to its ultimate limit. Can xenophobia, racism, sexism, toilet humour and hairy naked men wrestling be funny? Oh yes.

You do need to know (as the girlfriend didn't...) that SBC's shtick is to interview unwitting (ideally stuffy and media hungry) people in character, as he did with Ali G etc. Doing this gets a laugh both because the character is so utterly crass and awful, and because the people he meets react a certain way with an apparently naive interviewer and a camera in front of them. Give some people enough rope and sure enough they'll hang themselves.

On the whole I'd say America comes off well from the whole thing - though certain Americans make themselves look crass, ignorant and offensive. Time and again people are courteous, tolerant and patient to an unbelievable degree - eg the driving instructor and the politeness coach. Add to this that SBC is a master of physical comedy and has absolutely no shame and you have a superb comedy film.

So much of the media is polished, predictable, corporatized, PC, gutless rubbish - look at the other releases this week, eg Santa Clause 3! - thank god someone can come along and produce a film like this.

City of God (2002)

Great film, very funny in parts and not a 'liberal' sermon

[9/10 · 14 November 2006]

Really loved this film, telling the story of the housing projects of Rio from their inception in the 60s to the end of the 70s through the eyes of a few of its major characters.

I avoided this film for ages because I thought it would be a worthy lecture about third world suffering, but it really isn't. My one qualm keeping it from a 10 out of 10 is that with so much history and so many characters in the mix, there are a lot of loose ends and unresolved stories, despite it being about as long as you can sit still for.

It's shot and directed beautifully, based on real events and people, and it doesn't condescend to the locals or make them out to be noble saints or any such rubbish. This is just about young people trying to survive - getting high, having fun, making money where they can, etc. The action is exciting and realistic but never glamorous. In the final part of the film we see where the cycle of poverty, zero education and violence ends up - it's like a tragic opera.

United 93 (2006)

Believe the hype - this is an amazing, gut-wrenching film

[10/10 · 6 June 2006]

Saw this film tonight and wow, it's a breathtaking roller-coaster of emotions. Greengrass makes you experience it all, anger, confusion, fear, pity, nausea, sympathy, hope, pride... I could go on. This is unbiased but gut-wrenching film-making at it's finest, and deserves Best Picture awards worldwide.

Obviously it's impossible to give a 100% accurate depiction of events - because everyone has a different perspective on the simplest thing. But we have the airplane tapes from the Moussaoui trial, with the record of the altitude and speed changes and even hearing the commotion of passengers storming the cockpit, plus the phone conversations and messages (my God can you even imagine leaving your loved ones a final voicemail in a situation like that) and years of knowledge of what happens in air-hijack situations.

You know what's coming, and have seen every bit of footage, but it doesn't stop you re-living the shock of that day, wishing on the passengers to recover the plane, welling up with emotion when they're speaking with those safe on the ground, saying goodbyes and hanging up in dignity. Even the footage of the 2nd plane hitting the WTC is given a new, and stomach-wrenching immediacy. Everyone was caught flat-footed, with two planes sent to guard the capital of the most powerful country in history - and they turned out to have gone in the wrong direction, unarmed... In years to come it may seem like this attack could have been a whole lot worse.

This is a drama in a long tradition of depicting real events in as 'truthful' a way as possible, and like a Shakespearean history play, or a novel like In Cold Blood, that means some artistic decisions / licences need to be taken and the results will not be to the taste of everyone. Of those decisions, I feel more positive about some than others: the terrorists are realistic, not from a comic book or Hollywood movie, and the repeated use of 'I love you' e.g. by one of the terrorists before boarding, by the passengers before fighting back, is unbearably powerful.

On the other hand I'm not sure why Greengrass made out the German passenger, an identifiable real victim, as an appeaser/coward. Couldn't this have been an anonymous member of the cast, or would that not play to American audiences / backers?

Ultimately though that's nit-picking, because this is as visceral a film as anyone could bear. Some will see in the film the indomitable spirit of the US, others their unpreparedness and naivety; some I think will come out in despair and others with hope, but I feel sure this is a film that will be talked about for years to come.

PS Isn't it scary the numbers of bug-eyed monomaniac loons posting on this site that are convinced this film either perpetuates a right-wing conspiracy or is riddled with socialist, terrorist-loving, 'European' anti-American ideology. Have they even seen this film??!!??

Minority Report (2002)

The Cruiser on top form

[9/10 · 11 May 2006]

Hugely enjoyed this futuristic cop action thriller. The plot has a few slight creaks I suppose (why haven't they changed his security clearance when the whole country is hunting him? yadda yadda) and when I saw it again the bit with the lady in the greenhouse is pretty weird - is she some sort of psychic as well? Good grief though, this is a future romp based on a story by the king of weird, Philip K Dick. His work is always a mad side-on look at the world, and the mental / ethical dramas thrown up by technology and science. What will people say if they film his Ubik (in the future, God shows up) or The Man in the High Castle (one of the best books ever - years after the Japs and Nazis win WW2 a German assassin comes to occupied America to hunt the author of a samizdat book about what would have happened if the Allies won...) Anyway, great visuals, great direction, great plot, loads of surprises and twists, the Cruiser unstoppable as always.

Downfall (2004)

Absolutely amazing

[10/10 · 25 April 2006]

Superlatives cannot do this film justice. Bruno Ganz in the role of his life as Hitler is extraordinary, but his performance is only so strong because of the outstanding supporting cast. An absolutely essential film for anyone with an interest in history and politics. It is not 'just another WW2 movie' because it takes you into the heart of fanaticism, the people who instigate and lead that fanaticism and the people that consent to be led by them even to the death of themselves and everything they love. Nothing could be more relevant today.

Even watching it on small screen you find yourself wincing at the suicides, the injuries and the explosions, and gasping at the coldness and horror taking place. The fact that it is based to the closest word and detail on two eyewitness accounts just knocks other supposedly 'realistic' pieces like Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, etc. into a cocked hat.

I have only two (slight) criticisms. Yet again in a film Hitler comes across as a gibbering madman - he was far more calculating, chilling and subtle than that, or he could not have seized power, fooled the 'Great Powers' into inaction, and then led a modern, industrialized country to its own utter destruction in the space of a few years. As the film develops though there are glimpses of the former Hitler, and the supporting cast are utterly convincing in their fanaticism - the actors playing Goebbels and his wife are particularly strong. As the film goes on we start to see this is the end of an incredibly powerful process. The supporting cast show just the right combination of fear, desperation and total, self-annihilating belief in Hitler and his leadership. Most of them are literally seeing for the first time the situation they have let themselves in for, and the true nature of their leader. Secondly, you couldn't want it to be any longer - an edited down version for those with only a couple of hours on hand would be good.

Orlando (1992)

Really dull, long-winded adaptation of a wonderful, concise novel!

[2/10 · 11 April 2006]

This was always going to be a hard novel to adapt - the very qualities that make it a great read make a confusing film. The book has a mysterious, dream-like, languid quality - Woolf can slip over hundreds of years in a sentence and the reader admires her prose skill and absolute razor conciseness.

On the screen though a jump of that kind, with no explanation, is just confusing. We detect from early on in the book that it's more of a psychological fable set against a literary / historical background than a naturalistic, historical story with a real plot. But on film all the realistic period detail etc taken in by your eye makes you instinctively expect realistic events. Might have been a better film if done like a Greenaway, so clear to the viewer it's not a 'realistic' story etc. Or if completely re-interpreted, or turned into a feminist polemic - by just translating as closely as possible events from the book to screen it's just thin and pointless. Plus many long, silent, madness-inducing pauses in the film, which obviously you don't get in a book.

There's simply no 'story' in the film, no reason to care, and the only character seen long enough to register is Tilda Swinton's Orlando, who as a distant, expressionless, apparent immortal you just can't care about. We don't even get to know 'what it's like' to be Orlando, and there's no interest in the whys and wherefores of his/her immortality - so no 'threat', no 'learning', no story arc of any kind. All in all I can't recommend the book highly enough (plus it's really thin!) but don't bother with the film.

Stiff (2002)

Clever visual puzzle

[10/10 · 5 April 2006]

I thought this was a great, really atmospheric short, don't understand the other comment here about not understanding... We're drawn in to thinking one thing that Kip Hall then turns around, so the roles of victim and predator are reversed. Visually this is excellent, and the black and white film really adds to the mood of tension. Really nicely directed and memorable 'falling over' camera shot from the victim's perspective.

The pace is cleverly done as well, so our focus on one brief moment is drawn out. Saw it at UK festival, it made a strong impression, and think it won first prize. Very much what a short should be about - memorable, no flab in script or directing, but still stretching the medium by telling a story while playing with our expectations as viewers, and still having low / no budget rather than some 'shorts' you see esp from universities that are 30 mins long and obviously had big budget...

Gangs of New York (2002)

Half-baked acting plus half-finished script equals one poor movie

[1/10 · 3 July 2003]

Overwrought, overlong, meandering, flabby, sentimentalised, poorly scripted, indulgent twaddle from one of the masters of modern film-making. How did it happen? If it had been made on a shoe-string by an idiot it would hardly matter but it cost a fortune and it was still rubbish. With an utterly incoherent story and dreadful acting from all but Day Lewis this was more reminiscent of The Muppets Take Manhattan than Goodfellas. The scene that summed up the film's failings was Day-Lewis draped in a US flag telling DiCaprio how his amazing energy reminded him of The Priest. The flag was just such simplistic, condescending, tacked-on profundity and DiCaprio has as much dynamism as a wilted lettuce on legs! Why did no-one work on the script? It's like a first draft, full of loose ends, cliches, historical inaccuracies and laughably second-rate Oirishisms. Save yourself several hours of life and don't bother with it.

In the Refrigerator: Spirit of a Haunted Dancer (2000)

My brain's gone numb - it must be In the Refrigerator!

[1/10 · 18 June 2003]

I saw this film at a short film festival in England, and perhaps it was presented in the wrong context, because it seemed to go on for ever. While the other shorts were punchy, witty and to the point, this indulgent 'long' wandered on and on, around and around. As I recall the direction, lighting etc were pretty good, but the narrative just meandered all over the place. Elements that were meant to be profound sometimes came across as plain comical, not least the woman in the fridge, but maybe this viewer missed some reference. One of the great rules is 'show don't tell', so the ceaseless explicatory voice over should have been ditched. Maybe this would work at a really 'artsy' festival, but up against low / no budgeted shorts it seemed flabby and dull. The most interesting part of seeing it was my sense of vertiginous panic as I realised minutes of my life were ebbing away watching this twaddle.