Robert Altman: The Early Years

Upon hearing of Altman's death late last year I knew I would have to make myself watch more of his films. I had only see 3 of his movies and really enjoyed all of them. So I set myself upon a mission to find and watch as many movies of his as I could.

Movie Review: Mash (1970)

I remember watching the MashTV series as a kid. I didn't get all the nuances of the show but I still thought it was funny. Until now I had never seen the original movie though. This movie has quite a different feeling than the TV series. Firstly, I don't recall ever hearing a gunshot or explosion at any point in the movie. If it weren't for the casualties coming in I wouldn't have known there was a war going on in the background. Apart from one instance the doctors don't seem to be under any stress whatsoever, even in the middle of surgery they are having a good time and trading barbs. The pristine green football field that is used for too long in the second half of the movie also comes out of nowhere. Are these guys near the front lines or on a college campus? By the end of the movie I was getting a little disappointed in that this movie had nothing to do about war until I heard the final announcement over the hospital's P.A. system. Throughout the movie announcements were made about war movies that were going to be shown for the staff. The announcements were very sarcastic and stressed how unrealistic these movies were for those caught up in an actual war. The final announcement of the movie was a self-referential announcement about the movie Mash itself. It was only then that I realized that this entire movie was a work of absurdity, it had as little to do with real war as any of the other movies they had mocked. My opinion of the movie flip flopped immediately and decided it was a very good film. 7.5/10

Movie Review: McCable & Mrs. Miller (1971)

One of my old college roommate's father worked on the set of this movie. Set construction I think. What I didn't realize until I read about this film on IMDB is that it was filmed in my home province of BC in Canada. This has to be one of the grittiest Westerns out there, a real precursor to Unforgiven. It shows how dirty and uncomfortable life probably was for those living out on the frontier. It also shows the main gunslinger, here Warren Beatty, with a definite sense of fear in him. He's human. Julie Christie is also great as the not-afraid-to-speak-her-mind madame of the brothel who is McCabe's partner in nearly every sense of the world. The big shootout scene at the end is fantastic and very realistic. People get hurt. People are scared for their lives and hiding. Not as exciting as Young Guns but the tension is much higher. 7.5/10

Movie Review: Images (1972)

I knew nothing about this movie going into it and was completely blown away. If you like David Lynch's Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive you'll probably like this. The film follows a woman with severe psychological problems, possibly multiple personalities, through a vacation at a lonely cabin in the countryside. The crazy thing with this movie is that it is all shown from Cathryn's (played by Susannah York) point of view and I was never quite sure what was real or not. Some characters appear to just be figments of her imagination but I was never totally sure. Hard to follow at times but I found this fascinating. 9/10

Book Review: I Killed Hemingway - William McCranor Henderson

A struggling writer makes a deal with the devil; he agrees to ghost write a novel for a bigger-than-life character who claims to have murdered Ernest Hemingway. As the writer hears more and more stories he begins to believe less and less in their veracity. The hype surrounding this shocking new 'autobiography' pressures the writer to press on with his plan while his own literary intentions get pushed to the side.

Peaking

TV Review: Twin Peaks (Complete Series)

One of my all-time favourite TV shows and my introduction to David Lynch. Unfortunately it went on for too long and the middle of the second season is very weak. However, I'm still eagerly awaiting my Japanese Season 2 DVD set.

Movie Review: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

Panned by most of the critics and a box office failure, but this is one of my favourite Lynch movies. To even try to understand the movie you have to have seen the entire TV series up to and including the 2 hour finale. I remember seeing this in the theatre in Vancouver with a collection of hard core Twin Peaks fans. Everyone was cheering as the credits were shown at the beginning of the film. This was my first time watching the movie in widescreen (on the DVD) since then and I've only had the old full screen VHS version for all these years. Unfortunately I didn't find the presentation all that much better, as I did with my first viewing of Blue Velvet in wide screen. The extra documentary on the DVD wasn't very interesting but the main movie is just a fantastic dreamscape of disjointed times and places. 10/10

Movie Review: Eraserhead Stories (2000)

A bonus documentary on the recent Eraserhead DVD from davidlynch.com It's not an exciting presentation as it's mainly just Lynch talking into a microphone, but he weaves together fascinating stories from the early days of the AFI. 7/10

TV Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 2)

More humour along the lines of season 1 but here it gets pushed even further. It takes a brave man to make jokes about himself being mistaken for a pedaphile or a rape survivor.

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J.K. Rowling)

Definitely the darkest of the series so far. It was a little unusual to Harry being so negative for so long. He is mad at just about everyone for most of the story. Unfortunately I heard the major spoiler of the book in a podcast before I had read it. I quit listening to that podcast shortly afterwards. What jerks!

International Shenanigans

Movie Review: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Caught this classic Bond film on TV. I probably wouldn't have watched it as I've seen it many times before but this time it was in HD so... Wow did it look good. Those scenes in front of the pyramids really make me want to go to Egypt. It was a little disappointing to learn that none of it was filmed in Egypt but that says a lot about the set and props department for this movie. Well done. Unfortunately this film was a lot cornier that I remembered it to be. More funny than exciting. After watching this I'm really stoked to see the newest Bond film. 6/10

Movie Review: Phenomena (1985)

My new King of B Movies. This was just awful but bad in a very funny way. It had all the elements of a disaster: bad story, bad acting, cheesy soundtrack that didn't fit the movie, horrible lighting, crappy sets, extremely fake looking gore, and most importantly ... a revenge seeking knife-wielding monkey. This movie comes from the mind of the famous Italian horror director Dario Argento. I haven't seen any of his other films and this one doesn't really compel me to. Jennifer Connelly, in one of her earliest roles, stars as the son of a famous American actor who enrolls in a private girls' boarding school in Switzerland. Unfortunately the school and the nearby town have been plagued by a series of grisly murders recently. This doesn't seem to concern any of the students however as they are often walking around the surrounding woods smoking and meeting up with boyfriends. Maybe they're not worried because of the unusual lighting conditions there - no matter what time of night or how deep in the woods they are there always happens to be a spotlight nearby. Anyways, Connelly's character is a little different than the rest because she can somehow communicate with insects. This is all quite silly and really doesn't do much for the film but get her drawn into a hilarious sequence of violent encounters that don't seem to upset her in the least. For anyone that likes really, really bad movies this is a good one. 2/10

Movie Review: Beyond Borders (2003)

Angelina Jolie plays a high society British women who decides to go to Africa to lend a helping hand at a refugee camp. There she meets a handsome and highly dedicated doctor played by Clive Owen. Of course they fall in love and she follows him to Cambodia and Russia. The plot is mostly about the plight of starving hapless refugees in the beginning but by the time they are in Russia the film is all about the two lovers. I think the message of the film gets lost as the story devolves into a romance and the spirit of the film changes. 6/10

Movie Review: House of Flying Daggers (2004)

From the director of Hero Yimou Zhang this is yet another flashy but beautiful, wire-action wonder. A story of subterfuge within subterfuge. An army officer goes undercover and helps a blind woman escape from jail in order to find the secret assasin clan she belongs to. But no one is who they appear or say to be. This nice little thriller is fleshed out with fantastic, almost dream-like sword fight scenes. A fight scene that takes place high above the ground in a bamboo forest is especially beautiful. 8/10

Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code - Extended Version (2006)

This is about 13 minutes longer than the theatrical version. The majority of the new scenes don't add a lot but are nice moments taken directly from the original Dan Brown novel. If you haven't seen this yet it would be better to watch this extended version. 7.5/10