Baby flack jackets on the merry-go-round

Patrick asked me to keep him up to date of all the movies I've been watching, as well as my blog posts, since his access to the latest Hollywood blockbusters and various points of call on the old interwebare going to be somewhat limited for a while. Of course, as yet, I haven't.

So here's a stone and a couple of feathered flying things:

Of the numerous flicks I've sat through recently there are 5 that have lodged themselves between the holes that is the colander of my memory: Letters From Iwo Jima, Cashback, United 93, Joe Strummer - The Future Is Unwritten and Mr Brooks.

For me, the pivotal scene in Letters is the moment when one of the Japanese commanders translates a letter, found on a dying American prisoner, to his men. The letter is from the soldier's mother: details of home, how much she misses him. It is no different from the letters from their own mothers, read by the Japanese soldiers abandoned by a war machine indifferent to their suffering. War is a horror created by monsters and fought by men, some of whom become monsters themselves, but most of whom just don't want to die, no matter what side they're on. Letters portrays each one individual, unique, battered down to a number, a figure, a statistic; it's a sad and beautiful meditation on that theme.

The Cashback flashback (I had to) where the au pair walks up the stairs has branded itself in my brain as giving us one of the most beautiful naked female bodies ever committed to celluloid. And I'd like to think I'm reasonably qualified to pass that judgement. Cashback is one of those rare beasts: a romantic comedy that's both genuinely, but not saccharine, romantic and funny. At times screamingly funny. It's a British movie that doesn't suck, it's quirky in a good way, intelligent, original, joyful, playful, sexy. It doesn't yet have a UK release date, which goes to prove, as far as I'm concerned, that most of the people who make decisions in the film industry, rather than movies, are imbeciles.

I wasn't sure about watching United 93. I wasn't sure if I wanted to put myself through that particular ride. one of the things I wasn't expecting was that the flight itself takes up only the last third of the film. The rest crosses between pre-flight routine and the air traffic control towers gradually realising they're losing planes and then one of them flies into the World Trade Center. With the outcome seared into the collective consciousness of the twenty first century, the film avoids subjectivity as much as possible, instead focusing on ordinary people reacting to one of the most fucked up situations you could ever imagine being in. You could call it a testament to the strength of the human spirit (on both sides) whilst the mechanisms designed to protect failed so dramatically around them. That the families of those who died provided the stories, and that some of those who stood in the control towers that day re-took their places is testament enough.

I wondered afterwards if those who took the planes that day were to know how many would die as a result of their actions, not in the towers but the eventual response, the ignition of a spark of hatred across the globe, the mass slaughter of innocents of all religions, would they still have done it.

What frightens me most is the fear that they would.

Of these five movies, all but Mr Brooks, I would say, have a strong human heart beating at their centre. That's something that comes pouring out of The Future Is Unwritten. That and the fact that Joe Strummer could also be a bit of a shit sometimes. Just like us all, heh? Perhaps all we are is the way others remember us, and Strummer, both good and bad, is remembered with warmth by those who tells his story around the camp fire. A simple story of a man who loved music, who believed in the human spirit, who failed as he succeeded, who stuck to his beliefs and who's band wrote themselves into the history books for almost all the right reasons.

Kevin Costner as the family man serial killer, Mr Brooks, with William Hurt as his evil conscience incarnate, dark and intelligent movie, blackly funny, a few nice stings in an original tale, Demi Moore so good, I thought she was Jennifer Connelly. So of course it seemed to disappear without trace in the British cinemas. Go figure.

Of the rest well:

Grandma's Boy from Adam Sandler's production company is a very funny movie about geeks and weed. That's all you need to know.

Disturbia is Rear Window for MySpace.

Vacancy was twenty great minutes stretched beyond endurance.

Fast Food Nation was all the ideas in the book somewhat unsuccessfully fictionalised. It is not an Avril Lavigne break-out movie.

Control was good but not as good as it's been made out to have been. If they ever make a movie about Sandy Denny then Samantha Morton is the shoe in for the lead.

Britannia Hospital is as accurate today as it was back then, maybe more so.

Knocked Up is weirdly funny and painfully truthful at times.

Ratatouille is sweet but not as funny as The Incredibles.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning is basically a remake of the remake of the original and about as pointless an exercise in bland time-wasting mediocrity as ever there was. And that's with a finger on the fast-forward.

So there you have it.


I really quite like the two grey badger stripes that grow either side of my chin when I haven't shaved for a few days. I pretend I'm becoming distinguished...

Listening to Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros: Streetcore