Just spotted a dvd called the Troll Hunter,took a pic but cant get it on here.Wonder if it stars Chip

Yeah top notch mutters

Walter Hill's Southern Comfort? With Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe? Great film, didn't know it was on.

first episode of this...

Walter Hill's Southern Comfort? With Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe? Great film, didn't know it was on.

oh well if mutleys watched 2 episodes i'll have too

Finally watched Full Metal Jacket.
Good film. Prefered Platoon.

The Departed next...

Been ridiculously busy with work for the last couple of months, but I have managed to squeeze a few filums into the gaps between work and sleep. Here's my thoughts on a few...

The Tree of Life
Wow. This looks stunning, and I do mean stunning. Every single shot in the film is beautifully framed and photographed. But it is one honkingly self-loving piece of filmmaking, and ultimately collapses under the sheer weight of its own pretentions. Stern demanding father (Brad Pitt) and saintly earth-mother (Jessica Chastain) are remembered in flashback by their surviving son (Sean Penn). A pretty bog-standard film decorated by some lovely window dressing. The universe explodes beautifully into existence, life begins, dinosaurs rule and develop a sense of morality (oh yes), people live their essentially unimportant lives, mistakes are made, differences are reconciled, and the universe continues on its majestic way. If the dinosaur scene doesn't make you laugh out loud then the ending will. Terence Malik is a director who unashamedly wears his heart and his beliefs on his sleeve, and this is a very very very easy film to mock. Maybe he caught me on a bad day, but I mocked. Others will love it.

Melancholia
In its own way this is every bit as self-important as The Tree of Life, yet I enjoyed it a lot more. It starts and ends with the end of the world, destroyed utterly by a collision with the rogue planet Melancholia (metaphor alert!) In between we have a new bride (Kirsten Dunst) barely able to function socially due to crippling depression. It's told in two parts: the wedding day, when Dunst's character is starting to unravel and new star has been spotted in the sky, and then a little while later, with the "star" recognised as Melancholia and getting ever closer. Not overlong, held my interest throughout, and a career-best turn from Dunst.

Bluebeard
I love this sort of shit. Classically grim French fairy tale gets the old-fashioned art-house treatment from Catherine Breillat. Lots of slow movement, bright colours and still camerawork, it reminded me of those French films that used to show up on late night Channel 4 but without the nudity. Story’s as old as the hills: impoverished and recently bereaved woman lives with her two young daughters in a rural village, overlooked by a castle belonging to a fabulously rich recluse of evil repute. Word comes that the blue-bearded ogre will bring riches to the household if he is allowed to take a daughter for his latest bride. The rumours suggest his previous marriages didn’t end well. Arty, slow, knowingly up its own arse, I enjoyed it.

13 Assassins
I love shit like this too when it’s done well, and Takeshi Miike delivered this in style. Miike is perhaps best known for the ultra-violent Ichi the Killer and the gruesome ending of Audition. He goes for a more restrained style here, though it’s not without violence (it’s a samurai film FFS). The story is again as old as the hills. I believe it’s a remake of a little seen 1960s film which in turn borrows heavily from Seven Samurai (tiny band of committed warriors fighting against overwhelming odds to right a wrong). It probably could have done with being 15-20 minutes longer, just to expand the characters a little. Ludicrous plot of course, but featuring a wonderfully sadistic villain and it finishes with an outstanding 30+ minute battle scene. Recommended.

Tyrannosaur
The only Des Hamilton I was previously aware of was the bloke who played for Bradford and Newcastle. Anyway, one of the first things I did after watching this superb film was to look up another Des Hamilton. He was the casting director for Tyrannosaur, and for the original short film of which it is an expansion. Whether it was solely his decision to cast Olivia Colman, or whether it was Paddy Considine's, or a combination of the two, it was a seriously imaginative piece of casting. I only knew Colman from her work in comedy, particularly Peep Show. It seemed a curious choice to cast her in such a role. Peter Mullan and Eddie Marsan are always reliable. I expected a quality film when I saw they had leading roles, but I was troubled about Colman. I needn't have worried; she was magnificent, hopefully a real career launching performance. Mullan was predictably superb. It's hard to sympathise with a bloke whose first act in a film is to kick his dog to death, but he gives his flawed character such depth, such a sense of a life hard lived, that you're fascinated by him. Marsan is wonderfully repellent. An impressive directorial debut from Paddy Considine; I hope there's a lot more to come from him on both sides of the camera.

The Help
Not sure what to make of this. Some of the performances are outstanding, particularly Octavia Spencer, but it wasn't held together with any believable narrative. The whole thing is essentially a sugar-coated account of race relations in 1960s Mississippi, and demonstrates that the black folks will get up off yo dem asses and speak up for themselves if only a nice, principled, privileged whitey lady will show them the way. The audience will nod smugly to themselves, say "weren't we ghastly but aren't we so much better now". Fine performances. Spencer is great, as is Viola Davis; the pantomine villainess is suitably pantominey and villainish. But it's a TV fillum at heart; will be loved by people who bought The Blind Side on day of release.

Le Quattro Volte
OK, this really shouldn’t have worked. An Italian film with no dialog that begins with a shot of a charcoal heap and then shows the story of a soul’s transport from human to animal to vegetable to mineral as it follows the life and death of an old goatherd, a young goat, a tree and another pile of charcoal. It’s a bizarre concept but a surprisingly warm and joyful film to watch. It really was quite lovely, and there are a few scenes that leave you scratching your head wondering how the director managed to shoot it. Excellent stuff with star turns from dog and goat alike.

Unknown
You know when you get those trailers that say "From the people that brought you (successful film)", in the hope that they will get people to go and see their latest film by association. Well the poster for this one should read "From the people who saw The Bourne Identity and thought it was good". So many plot points have been lifted it's difficult to know where to start. It's not terrible, in fact it's an entertaining enough film. It just doesn't need to exist. The only worthwhile exercise was spotting how many stars of recent European classics were wasted in too-small roles. I spotted Sebastian Kock (The Lives of Others), Karl Markovics (The Counterfeiters), Stipe Erceg (The Edukators, The Baader-Meinhof Complex) and of course Bruno Ganz (Downfall), who at least got some decent screen time. Mutley may have spotted others. I can only assume that Julia Jentsch and Moritz Bleibtreu were busy.

I'll post a few more when I can be arsed....

Finished Homeland last night, really enjoyed it and looking forward to series 2

Started series 2 of Walking Dead tonight, hope it lives up to my expectations