What DVD have you just watched?

Broken Wings 2002

A struggle of a single mother to raise her four children after the death of her husband. Film takes place in Haifa Israel and is well worth watching.

Hilarious.

A few long flights yielded a couple of good films (Olympus has fallen, Les Misérables), one very bad one (Die Hard 5) and this little gem about a company rep in the business of buying acreage for shale gas exploration. When he is confronted by an environmentalist, they start fighting over a small town. This film only borrows the subject matter from 'Gasland' and is no remake of Dallas or There Will Be Blood - instead, it's typical Gus van Sant fare about a man coming to terms with who he is and what he stands for. Not Van Sant's best work, but worth a watch. And happy to see McDormand is aging gracefully, here's hoping she doesn't succumb to the forever young craze.

Cheers,

EJ

Rupert, Night of The Hunter is available on DVD, usually very cheaply too. I don't know where you live but try the likes of Play, Amazon, Sainsburys Entertainment etc.

It is a very good film - the only one Charles Laughton directed, and one wishes he'd done more.

He can still make amends... most guys out there never manage even that one good film, and even some actors don't.

Cheers,

EJ

Hot Shots! in high res. A bit of bloom is well worth the price of admission for this new transfer of one of the funniest parodies ever made.

Cheers,

EJ

A 1997 release which never lost its charm.

Great movie.

Apologies, got the year wrong. Film was released in the Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 1973.

X-Men first class is a grower. The differences with the comics are huge, the movie almost completely re-invests the origin story for Mysique, Xavier, and Magneto, reinvents Shaw as a different character, and puts the life of most of the other mutants on new time lines. Beast comes across as the most canon-accurate. But it's a good story with solid acting - McAvoy and Fassbaender fully live up to the characters they portray and carry and own the movie.

Cheers,

EJ

Broken City is a bog standard thriller, with a somewhat believable premise and an unconvincing plot development. In a time when movies seem to massively revert to the classic binary good vs bad guys plot lines, this one goes all self-consciously early 2000s, with virtually every main character sporting shades of grey (except for the professional lobbyist, of all people). As a result, there's nobody to root for and it's due to Wahlberg and Crowe (though I think he is miscast) that it kept my attention to the end. So not a total loss, but nothing special, either.

Cheers,

EJ

Part 2, Attack of the Clones. The scenes with Anakin and Padme are cringeworthy. "I don't like sand... it's course, and gets in everywhere. Not like here... Here everything is smooth" - and they kiss. Skywalker's silly monologuing goes on and on. Just what Padme sees in this whiny baby remains a complete mystery. But all the rest makes for quite a good adventure.

EJ

Not for me EJ. Lucas really needs to write better dialogue. Whenever it starts to threaten to roll some dead dialogue pulls me back out. REALLY bad character development, unbelievable story arcs ....dreadful.

Lets get controversial - the ONLY Star Wars film that really works for me is 'A New Hope'.

M

I watched episodes I to VI in that order (story order, not release order) on Blu-ray when the box set came out. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. They're kind of familiar and evocative of a past life for me, I guess.

I grew up with and still love the original trilogy, and am still irritated what Lucas did with the prequels in general. Even those have redeeming features, but what brings the films down is how the Skywalker storyline is handled. For some reason Lucas also saw fit in hiring the worst actors for that particular role. Skywalker is much better drawn in the Clone Wars cartoon series (literally, too, of course).

EJ