Letterboxd — Your life in film

Tonally the Hunter feels like another Winter's Bone. Lacking in good cheer, hugely depressing and substituting one dead man for another. Like Winter's Bone the film relies heavily on a strong central performance; Willem Dafoe instead of Jennifer Lawrence, and beautifully shot scenery. Like Winter's Bone I found it tough to love, hard to get into but rewarding as the character's grow. The supporting cast are good. Frances O'Connor was moving, Sam Neill very solid and young Morgana Davies a…

Howard Hawks final film is a real disappointment. It starts out brightly enough. The opening 30 minutes set during the American civil war and pitching Yankee Wayne against gold robbing Reb's. The train robbery sequence is great fun and the best action in the entire film. From there the film switches gears and relies heavily on an aging John Wayne to carry the dialogue. The plot becomes increasingly familiar and listless after the opening act heading towards the inevitable High…

I always thought I loved boxing movies. Turned out I'd never seen one. All I've ever seen were underdog movies. Rocky being the archetypal 'boxing' movie that isn't. Crying Fist is a boxing movie. The whole film builds up two pugilists with extraordinary backgrounds and never once do they meet outside the ring before their third act showdown. The film is two entirely separate character studies that never coincide or interact or interject.

It's like watching a shill for a…

I kinda skipped over the Brothers Bloom mistakenly believing I'd already seen it. Most con-man movies tend to blend together after a while. This blended in with Confidence, Matchstick Men and the Nine Queens remake (the name of which escapes me but it starred John C. Reilly).

I ended up adding it to my watchlist after discovering it was the work of Rian Johnson. A director I greatly admired after seeing his debut feature Brick, which is a classic already;…

As part of my campaign to watch every Arnie film.

I remember hating Junior absolutely. On a re-watch it actually has a few bright points. Emma Thompson gives it her all as a clumsy scientist. And this is a ballsy career move even for a guy whose star was on the wane like Ahnolt in 1994. This was coming off True Lies and he could have coasted through the decade making the same old action films. This was a gutsy…

Seen as part of my Peckinpah Manly Men's film season. This is my least favourite Peckinpah film to date. It's horribly uneven and suffers from huge pacing problems. The film starts out great. The buddy movie with James Caan and Robert Duvall was hugely enjoyable. Their back and forth banter was electric. Sadly the core of the film is Caan's character recovering from injuries and forming a squad of men for some sort of manly mission. But too long is…

A few years ago I claimed, rightly at the time, that animation was in a golden age. Pixar was at the peak of its powers and the other animation houses were forced to improve. Everything that was being released was incredible. Even the most straightforward kids movie looked awesome and had great characters and dialogue. Maybe the bar was raised too high as I feel the bubble has burst. The last great animated film I saw was How to Train…

The Madagascar films are the epitome of cartoon mediocrity. They look pretty and finish strong to try and keep it fresh in your mind that it's all a lot of fun but the first half hour of this film is nothing at all. I remember Dirk saying, after seeing the second Madagascar, that he wished they'd give up on Alex and company and concentrate on the penguins. I totally agree with this statement and Madagascar 3 just backs up the…

Watched as part of my campaign to watch every Arnie film.

T2: Battle Across Time is shoddy amusement tour picture starring Arnie and T2 co-star Ed Furlong. If you thought Furlong was hard work in T2 you ain't seen nothing yet. His performance here is excruciating. He gets a load of one-liners and they all miss. He's even whinier and less likeable than in T2. Arnie's dialogue feels like it was thrown together in five minutes. Such cringeworthy lines as…

I really liked Tommy Wirkola's last genre mashup flick Dead Snow. A film where Nazi zombies threatened the world. In Witch Hunters Wirkola asks the question; wouldn't it be weird if Hansel and Gretel grew up to be witch hunters? And promptly does very little with the answer. Basically they hunt witches. That's your movie. Wirkola occasionally re-discovers his knack for mayhem that proliferated Dead Snow. The machine gun scene springs to mind. That's absolute carnage. The film doesn't have…