What DVD have you just watched?

I don't think that Rolling Stone and I watched the same film.

I fail as the target audience on both counts. Especially horses. I just can't stand horses. 

Winky, I will take horses any day over John Williams music.

Cass is the movie based on former hooligan turned bouncer then author and also a supporter of early British Oi! punk band the Cockney Rejects. "Stinky" Turner made fond references to Cass Pennant (as the "black Del Boy") in Turner's own book "Cockney Reject". There are several hooligan based movies out there but Cass comes from more of a thinking mans angle and as a story based on his life and adversities is compelling and worth watching, even if you do not like football, or hooliganism or films set in the cockney east end.

Taken 2, BluRay out only two months after I saw it in cinema. Watched it together with my wife today, she loved it as much as I did. One of last year's best bad films.

EJ

I am half Norwegian, like dead pan humour [and Norwegian humour is so dry that is barely registers on the "humour" Richter scale as being remotely funny - I like that], and I detest special effects ...

Sounds like a film for me ...

Please can you post a suggestion about where to get it? Mot a link, but a suggestion.

ATB from George

Dear Jason,

Thanks. Sometimes I am made aware of something very good by the nicest and rarest sources!

Thanks from George

Hi Jason,

Yes, a great film. Loved the use of electricity pylons!

M

A documentary that follows a billionaire couple as they begin construction on a mansion inspired by Versailles. During the next two years, their empire, fueled by the real estate bubble and cheap money, falters due to the economic crisis.

Hard to understand how husband and wife agreed to have themselves documented.

The Bourne Legacy

Disappointing.

The film felt very much as a first act to me. Lots of exposition leading .....nowhere.

Any tension in the film in the movie was based upon your empathy with a human weapon, and the scientist that had helped to create him.

Generally I felt it was well acted and executed. However, there were two things that pulled me out of the story:

1. Allowing the scientist to simply obtain/synthesis a virus that targeted a particular person and changed their DNA. Leaving aside whether the facility they broke onto would have continued to exist, at a time when lots of people were being murdered to cover tracks, for me this took the film from spy-thriller into science fiction; and

2. I could go with the idea that people might be able to be 'enhanced', but that doesn't include allowing the to drop fifty feet onto a human being and simply walk away.

But fundamentally this 'story' essentially delivered nothing. In the initial film, The Bourne Identity, you had a mystery. Jason Bourne's back story was unknown and had to be pieced together. By the time this was achieved you had some investment in his story which made the next two films good viewing.

This seems to me to be a well executed delivery of a poor story.

M

Hi M,

Thanks for this - I am fond of the Bourne films and already decided to give this one a miss for fear of dilution, your review clinched it.

Cheers,

EJ

You've saved yourself a couple hours of your life you wouldn't be able to retrieve.

It isn't even bad.

Holy Motors

I am tempted to write 'pretentious crap', in fact I just did, but do note the inverted commas.

Is it? I have to say that my thoughts drift to the Emperors New Clothes, but that might be unkind as I can imagine some people for whom this film may do wonders.

Do you like the idea of a film with no plot, or explicit story line? No simple character development? Something which challenges the norms around which usual movies are built? If you do this may be up your street. For me it did little.

M

The original The Italian Job. Had never seen it before, an absolute riot. I think they could have added a final scene to close out the mob storyline and perhaps Lorna reuniting with Charlie, but otherwise pitch perfect.

Cheers,

EJ

EJ

Great movie EJ, although I have to disagree - I think the ending is one of the most perfect in the history of movies. And Noel Coward is wonderful ("Freddie, everybody in the world is bent".)

Great soundtrack too, don't you think?

Yup, brilliant. And don't forget Benny Hill! 

EJ

Yes - he was born to play that part...

"I said blow the bloody doors 'orf!!!"

Great film, and NOT a success at the cinema. A great shame as it robbed us of the sequel, where the french mob would have taken possession of the bullion.

M

American Pie - Reunion

I have to admit that I really enjoyed the original film. It somehow walked a line between being a gross out comedy and being romantic at the core, something NONE of the others have achieved.

This episode comes a distant second to the original, in that it had three genuine laughs. For the rest - the same old same old.

M

The Campaign is a childish and simplistic but often funny parody of American politics. Worth watching as long as you don't expect a deep story, fundamental insights, or mature language.

Cheers,

EJ

A happily married man's (Chris Rock) sanity is pushed to the limit when his wife's (Julie Delpy) crazed, over-sexed French relatives crash their cramped New York apartment. 

Funny, on the light side.

Another first for me, Fargo. And again, I wonder why I never saw this before? Brilliant film.

Cheers,

EJ