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You wouldn't expect a movie wholly consisting in two ageing men trolling each other to be much fun, but it remains compelling throughout its run.

It's class warfare in a single room practically between older wealthy man and a young but humbler and more ambitious man. As civilised as the whole thing seems on the surface, it still ends up being quite animalistic at the root, with the pair bullying and trying to humiliate each other for supremacy in a house with no spectators at all.

Olivier and Caine deliver excellent performances in their respective roles and play off well against each other.

It's compelling, and it's impressive that it does so with solely two (or possibly three, but I didn't read up much about the third character), but at the end of the day it seems to be nothing more than frivolous diversion. A lot of energy is expended only to get back to square one and you get the feeling that all you've done is seen a passing performance.

Honourable Mentions: High Strung (1991). Amazing movie involving mostly just one man complaining at the camera in his apartment during the film's run. There are a few other characters that come up (I think four characters total), but it seems to me to be a lot more meaningful than this movie.

The book is one of the most meaningful books ever written. It is a cautionary tale against greed and unchecked attempts to suppress human animal instinct.

It was wrapped up in a sensational package, giving an attractive fictional and blond account of all such cases of chyldren locked away by parents, sometimes wicked, sometimes fearful, sometimes overprotective, but always absolutely crazy, who try to prevent their spawn from coming into contact with the outside world and once in a while come to be caught and punished by the long arm of the law.

This movie more or less just focuses on the second part. It's a good story, but most of the meaning is lost. This isn't about the enticements of greed slowly peeling a mother away from her natural instinct. We hardly see the mother, and when we do, we get the impression that she's merely a naturally cruel and insane person rather than a normal person changed by universal greed. As for the suppression of humanity, the most shocking scenes from the book are not translated into the film. Here the chyldren just seem a bit bored, frustrated, and sick at being kept in an enclosed space.

I can say the chylde actors do a very good job and the project was perfectly cast. Overall it's rather a cheap and limpid production, however.

Honourable Mentions: El Castillo de la Pureza (1973). It's a similar story based on real events about a father who keeps his family locked up. Has a bit more life than this one, with the father's hypocrisy an important part of the film and the family's natural inclinations forcing their way out here and there.

This is really an excellent country mouse/city mouse romance. Despite what you might think from the synopsis and from the outer appearance of the titular character, it's not really an action movie (unlike the sequel).

What you'll get here is an excellent buildup of a romance between a city girl and something of a wild man (very much superficially akin to the George of the Jungle or Tarzan scenario, which is quipped about in the film itself). And this is really done right because it's very slow with a lot of sexual tension and chemistry. Most of the film is the girl being swept off her feet by Dundee's philosophical ramblings, feats of courage and competence, and confident charisma.

Yet there's also this air of innocence about the man. There's nothing too physical or sexual about the sparks between himself in the female lead throughout the whole time in the outback. It's compelling without being forward. This nuance of his character is highlighted when Dundee goes into the completely unfamiliar world of New York. He doesn't exactly come out swinging. Still friendly and brave, but clearly a little more reserved and shy in the new environment, it shows not only the loneliness of being an outsider in a big city, but also adds a bit of boyish vulnerability to the character, rounding out his attractiveness.

Rarely is romance done so well.

The comedy is also pretty good, with the yokel Australian outbackers also having a lot of charm to them.

Honourable Mentions: A New Leaf (1971). Old bachelor needs to marry to keep his lifestyle. It's a completely cynical exercise in wining and dining a rich woman, but near the end some rays of love finally peep out through the clouds.

I see Japanese cinema declined as hard in the 90s as the Japanese economy did.

This is a stunningly strong concept that I'm surprised hasn't been the material for more films.

A bunch of down-and-outers who have been flushed out of mainstream society for one reason or another have come to drift together into the pool of night school for another shot at education. This is another Magnificent Seven type of movie (or, in this case, Seven Samurai would be more appropriate) where much of the superficial appeal comes from just having a diverse set of interesting identities to observe. This time the team is much better and more realistically composed than Sumo Do, Sumo Don't (1992), where it was a bunch of somewhat offensive comedic archetypes. Here you get the foreigner, the aged day laborer, low IQ guy, street urchins, and even a hikikomori. They're all tied together by the will of their old bachelor teacher.

The teacher is quirky, which is supposed to be charming; and the students have tragic stories and hardships, which is supposed to substitute for meaning. In the last 10 minutes we get a boring and barely sensical philosophical exploration of happiness that falls flat - meant to mimic depth.

It all just seems to be a poorly executed attempt to manufacture something warm and meaningful. Ultimately what it really amounts to is a few brief vignettes about some of the characters and meaningless outings together. It's basically the feeling of leafing through someone else's photo albums, seeing some school pictures, and being told about some of the people in the pictures. A little boring, a little sad, and a great deal of meaningless.

Honourable Mentions: Stand and Deliver (1988). A TV drama and centered around Mexicans, it was never going to be a big hit, yet despite the fact that it's based on a true story, it is deep, honestly emotional, and substantial. A high school teacher in an impoverished school district successfully trains a group of students who are grappling with educational underdevelopment and serious personal problems to pass a relatively advanced high school math exam. The teacher is interesting? Is he a hero? Perhaps, but at least some of his motivation appears to be fueled by selfish sources, such as personal ambition. Possibly the best movie about the bond between a teacher and his students and certainly the most underrated one I know of.

This is a stereotypical Almodovar movie dealing with identity of all sorts perhaps symbolized by the lives of its transvestite protagonists.

The plot is a meandering mystery that sees its main character, played by Fele Martinez, try to reach his ambitions by weaving in and out of different identities. All the while, there's a film within the film about two boys in a Catholic school, which is, in a rather serpentine twist, supposed to be a very oblique allegory to the container plot itself.

Lluis Homar gives an astounding performance as the passionate and lecherous middle aged man who pursues a relationship with the Fele character. Really excellent casting. Everything about him oozes creepy and inappropriate obsession.

Honourable Mentions: Barfly (1987). "Who are you?" / "The eternal question - and the eternal answer: I don't know"

At least the plot is cohesive, but the characters are such a mess that it's difficult to wrap your head around. The backstories are extremely dense and lead nowhere. For example, the main character wants to be a musician and there are a few scenes of him in a music bar playing the saxophone, presaging some sort of deep connection to the plot, but nothing.

It's otherwise a very basic action film where like a million shots are fired and the body count must be in the thousands. Quite entertaining if you like action and rather stylish, but really nothing groundbreaking. Odd since "A Better Tomorrow" was quite a good movie, but all of the director's other films are disorganised and considerably weaker.

Honourable Mentions: A Better Tomorrow (1986). Stylish, a bit maudlin, and completely cohesive. The best work from this director I've seen.

The novel was a loosely related collection of random adventures, metastories, and social commentary which was protagonised by a group of naive middle aged losers.

The strengths were in the characters. Pickwick's core group of friends (and especially Pickwick himself) was conservative and gullible, which lead to many humorous situations, while Weller, Jingle, and related characters were the street-smart counterweight to the central group.

Unfortunately, this film decides to present a summary of the situations rather than the relationships between the characters. It doesn't even touch upon Dickens' characteristic social commentary. This makes for a very simplistic retelling of the novel.

It's mildly entertaining and fun for someone who's read the novel to see the characters come to life, but it would be too confusing for anyone else to make much sense of this barely cohesive plot. And, frankly, the characters aren't exactly the most appealing.

Honourable Mentions: Mortal Kombat Annihalation (1997). I oddly got the same feeling watching this as with the sequel to the original Mortal Kombat film. Although I had seen the first movie and played the games, the plot of the second movie put the viewer in the middle of such a jumble that it was difficult to gain one's footing.

A mildly amusing film. And I do put an emphasis in the word "mildly". It doesn't go further than that.

You get farcical treatments of cliche subject matter. The wide feels underappreciated, the barbarians just want to pillage, the advanced aliens try to explain basic scientific knowledge to medieval idiots, etc. And of course everything gets wrapped up in a quick and tidy happy ending.

It's a bunch of tripe capped off with an insufferable final tracked that puts quotes from the movie to an ugly techno beat.

The original book was a bit farcical and silly in its own right, but it had ambiance and an intriguing concept. It had runaway ambition and intrigue and sincere portrayals of betrayal, romantic and otherwise. This film doesn't amount to even a fraction of what the book was and in no way deserves to bear its name.

Honourable Mentions: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Probably the darkest of the Disney movies. Turns a serious novel into a musical with comedy elements. It wasn't bad, though.

Just kidding. I don't care.

Another American bildungsroman mostly focusing on sex. A shame. Such potential for more depth, being that it's a movie set in World War II that's not really about the War and only mentions it tangentially. Would have been good to get a slice of the times. Alas, it was not to be. Instead we get the tediousness of the awkward teenage years without the comedy. There's a scene of probably like 10 minutes of the protagonist going into a pharmacy to buy a "rubber."

I will say that the performances are fantastic. I don't know how old the actors playing the teenagers are, but they definitely do it right. Extremely believable. As for the older woman, I can't imagine anyone who could fit the role better than Jennifer O'neill. Flawless casting and a great ambiguous performance.

The maudlin little piece that plays throughout is extremely effective and the film would have been worth all the cliches for that ending. What a simple, yet effective, way to say good bye.

Honourable Mentions: Lolita (1997). Lolita is considered cheap, ugly, immoral, offensive, and absurd. It is also extremely controversial. Not a peep out of this one. In fact, many directors count it among the best films of all time. It's, in fact, ARTISTIC!

This movie bears far more of a resemblance to something like Animal House than American Graffitti in that it's more about the timeless awkwardness of teenage sex and relationships than it is about outlining what specifically defined an era for the youth of the time period.

It is, however, raw in the sense that it's fairly realistic. Hearts are dashed, young men are spurned for not being good enough at their tender age, older people are spurned for being too old, and you feel the regret in many of the adults left yearning for more in this small barren Texas town.

However, these moments of depth are interspersed between longueurs of rather trite adolescent discovery of sexuality and identity that never really culminates into anything. It's odd because we usually find the universal to be meaningful. In this case the universal is base and cliche.

I found the topic of the title extremely interesting, but it's only mentioned for a single line in the whole movie where it is suggested that the movie industry is going into a decline. Indeed film received heavy competition from television around the 50s and movie theaters fell into unpopularity. The sad fall of an era.

Honourable Mentions: Apocalypto (2006). Although it wasn't a big part of the plot, there's something melancholically significant about the end of the era of film mentioned at the end of the movie and in the title. It's the same feeling as you get at the ending of Apocalypto where they see the Spanish ships. Life will have to go on mundanely for us permanently, but big shifts are going to create tremendous macro trends that will affect other people after us.

This film was trying too hard to be deep.

It's a collection of a diverse variety of one-dimensional characters and their philosophies on life, with Jack Lemmon's character in the middle of it, who is himself a fairly one-dimensional character. That is to say, his character is quirky, but it's still a savage pursuer of the American dream willing to do even the unethical and illegal to maintain his lavish lifestyle. However, his character is obsessed with World War II and loves big band music. Is quirky enough to be well-rounded?

His business partner believes in traditional moral decency and ethics, he interactions with an old artesan who finds meaning in his wife and his work, and he has a tryst with a free-spirited young woman who's very much a poster chylde for the 70s. It's almost like meeting the 3 different ghosts in A Christmas Carol.

Philosophically it's trying too hard to be deep but really comes out very safe and pedestrian. Yet the style is compelling enough. A few days in the life of a listless man. One might say he's on the precipice of disaster, but instead it feels like he's been floating near the bottom for along time. The scenery of 70s Los Angeles also makes this movie worth a watch.

Honourable Mentions: Bad Lieutenant (1992). This film is a very stylistically close to Save the Tiger. It's a few uncomfortable days of a policeman's life which has apparently been hovering near rock bottom for a while by this point.

There's a lot to admire of Miss Jean Brodie. She has poise, she's well-spoken, and she is brave - one might say so brave she asks much of the people under her command but wouldn't bat an eyelash if she had to do it herself. And, of course, she has something of a visionary quality.

But perhaps far more than any other inspirational teacher movie, this is a realistic portrait of a free thinker who is actually out of step with society, which is not totally a good thing. She keeps unrealistic expectations, has disdain for anything she doesn't consider beautiful, and doesn't mind sacrificing people for her ideals.

Miss Jean Brodie embodies the 20th century - a century that was marked by boundless ambitious and idealistic rebels that wanted to see their vision of the world come to fruition. Sometimes they did a great deal of good, but often times the embodiment of their dreams showed in very cruel ways.

This classroom is a microcosm of the world. And what of the more pedestrian dramas? The love interests and intrigues of Miss Jean Brodie and the rest of the cast? It's captivating, even outrageous at points, but seems so very petty.

Who is Miss Jean Brodie? At one moment so expansive and inspired, encompassing the whole world with her ideas, while at another moment so base and narrow. A woman in her prime, or a frail woman deep in the descent of middle age?

I really don't recall having seen anything like it.

Honourable Mentions:

If this were made in USA, it would be classified as "Oscar Bait."

It's about a beloved teacher a boy's school. We never exactly find out why he's beloved. The first day the students bully him but eventually he seems to gain control of the disciplinary situation. It's briefly mentioned that he believes in disciplinary techniques other than punishment.

And that's precisely the major problem with this movie. It's packed with plots. It is, in fact, a biographical movie covering most of the adult life of the so-called "Mr. Chips." And under this timeline, every scene is so brief and fleeting. Nothing is allowed to take root. Under those conditions it's really hard to warm up to any character.

Things are presented that are really quite tawdry attempts to rack up Oscar-worthiness points. It's about as subtle as the Very Special Sitcom episodes. There's bullying in the boys' school. The administration is rigid. There's discrimination (against Germans, though). Some war happens in the background. I'm not sure which war. Judging from the costumes it should be World War I but at some point some boys mock a German teacher with a salute from the World War II Germans (or so I thought - actually apparently it's a Prussian thing, but still).

It's one of those movies I thought the world would have grown out of by now, where you're supposed to fill in the blanks about how to feel about characters instead of the movie itself letting the characters' personalities unfold ("his students in the film seem to like him so I guess I should like him too even though I haven't actually seen him do much likeable").

It's entertaining, though, as a soap opera is.

Honourable Mentions: Ikiru (1952). The same actor plays the character in his twilight years. But it's quite a histrionic performance with him wheezing and barely walking. He channeled a bit of the decrepit "mummy" played by Kanji Watanabe in Ikiru. I do not approve.

I saw this movie as a chylde and then as a teenager and I was well-impressed by it. Now I see how very simplistic it is. There's not that much nuance to it. Decent hard-working, even peace-loving, folks are being assailed in the cities night and day by roving bands of violent muggers in the cities who are not only threatening, but rude and operating with impunity.

Well, of course living in the city is annoying, but it isn't like that. Nevertheless, we know who this movie was made for - country bumpkins or shut-ins who are afraid to go into the city and get all their knowledge of the situation from crime statistics in the sensationalist media. It's clear this is a propaganda exploitation PSA piece for all the paranoid maniacs in the world clutching their guns in the middle of the night for dear life.

There's no grey area here at all. Paul Kersey is a conscientious objector, reasonable liberal, and overall fine upstanding nice guy, but all manner of bad things befall him. And it seems he can go out every single night and become a honey pot for muggers - so many are there and so brazen they are.

The one - perhaps - better thing from that perspective about this biased movie is that at least Paul is only getting revenge vicariously, as unlike the other movies in the series, he's not actually getting that sweet, sweet spot-hitting revenge against the people who actually wronged him.

Despite all this, and the fact that seeing Bronson trying to pretend to be a a nervous wreck actually comes out looking like comical overacting (who would've known he was actually a character actor with a narrow range), I like this movie. It's full of style and ambiance, whether it's on gritty New York winter nights or in barren places in Tucson. It's directed in a tidy manner. All of the actors do a fine job. And, of course, when it's a matter of acting like a hardened soldier, it's hard to beat Bronson. He might not have much of a range, but what he does best, no one does better.

Honourable Mentions: A Promising Young Woman (2020). The left-wing Death Wish - a woman goes out every night trying to trap men into trying to assault her so she can shame them on social media. Tsk, tsk. Very much also presents a crazy world full of dangers, with the victims, crimes, and solutions all more left-wing than Death Wish. Quite a well-crafted movie, but if I much prefer Death Wish, truth be told - dumb simplicity with a lot of style.

The story is basic and predictable. The son of a wealthy hacienda owner wants to get together with the daughter of another, but a "distant" cousin of the daughter doesn't like that at all. It turns out this cousin is extremely mean-spirited and ambitious, so he stirs up quite the tragic series of events and comes to obtain power over both of the haciendas himself.

Something amazing about this movie is how smooth its simple story is. Every plot point is believable and fits into the sequence marvelously. It was very well-written. There's never any need to add deus ex machinae or to stretch the imagination to believe the events of the plot because they are integrated seamlessly into each other and the world created by the writer.

Of course, as usual in Valentin Trujillo movies, the casting is impeccable. It's hard to say who did this or that or embodied the character better. There aren't that many characters - perhaps only 8 or so (which may be what makes the movie so strong - simple but executed marvelously) - but they're all flawlessly cast and written. Even the minor characters, such as the girl's father embodies the embattled and concern landowner who doesn't want to give up his claims, but hopes a solution could be found.

One thing that left me shocked was the music. Often times these movies were just vehicles to showcase some cheesy ranchera songs. I think there are only three tracks on this film, of which one is a foreboding ranchera-corrido. The second is a very effective dark instrumental track. And shockingly the daughter sings a spectacular melancholy pop song in the middle of the film. A shame I couldn't find it reproduced anywhere.

It's predictable and the ending is rushed, but what a pleasant surprise to see a film so well-written and expertly constructed. I also appreciated the somber mood. While it's not horror, the instrumental track is reminiscent of theme songs from horror films and the ending is that classic horror ending where the characters have reason to feel relieved on some level, but they've lost so much on the way there that it's an ambivalent and not a happy ending.

Honourable Mentions: Great Balls of Fire! (1989). One unintentionally funny line of dialogue that I think pops up multiple times is when the evil cousin broaches marriage to the hacienda owner's daughter, she replies "but we're cousins!" And they have a little tiff. Jerry Lee Lewis famously married his cousin and the community's shock was portrayed in his 1989 biopic.

Crude criminal Charles Lee Ray transfers his soul into the body of an ugly doll on the brink of death and wreaks havoc on a single mother and her chylde.

The 90s was such a countercultural decade in art it's amazing. Just like action movies, horror movies went into a trend of being really silly - half violent, half comical - with comic characters and many one-liners. They had completely turned the formal horror genre on its head. The old gravitas of the horrific and pitiful deamonic possession of the 70s was long, long gone.

Here it's pretty funny to see a doll that looks like a little boy causing such a violent ruckus and spewing profanity and threats all the time. Chucky as a character is full of style if nothing else.

However, the film is full of irrationalities and plot holes that are very difficult to overlook for someone whose suspension of disbelief hasn't come into effect:

1) There's a scene where the cop is driving and chucky comes to life and tries to murder him but he doesn't stop driving for several minutes for no reason.

2) At some point Andy becomes afraid of Chucky, but up until then they had been friends? Why the sudden change of heart offscreen?

3) Chucky's voodoo mentor seems shocked that Chucky used what he taught him and that Chucky's committing violent acts. Uhhh... They seemed very close and Chucky was apparently an infamous criminal. Is this anything to be shocked about?

4) Many, many times the characters know full well Chucky's around and in an ornery mood and get distracted by some minor thing only to have Chucky somehow launch a surprise attack on them.

I appreciate that they didn't rely on cheap jump scares to accomplish the mission, though. I'll give them that much.

Honourable Mentions: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The comic partner of Rober Rabbit is a foul-mouthed baby named Baby Herman. Much of this movie's effect revolves around a chylde's toy behaving rudely and aggressively as well.

Perhaps it was because this film was steeped waist deep into the 1960's, I found it trite. It starts off with a documentary film maker and his wife going off to some new-age psychological treatment camp. Throughout the film you'll also be exposed to psychoanalysis (the prevalent psychotherapeutic modality at the time and beginning to gain traction among the middle classes), an argument over some sort of birth control, home-exercise regimens, and talk about the acceptability of hair that goes past one's ears in men. This movie is a time capsule. If you tried to make a movie parodying the 60s you'd find it hard to get more 60s.

And the whole movie revolves around the concept of general hippyism, specifically free love, but non-violence is also mentioned at some point. All we need now is some scenes of the Vietnam war.

Or perhaps it's not the dated quality of the setting, concerns, and situations of the characters so much as the fact that the characters are boring and most of their story arcs don't amount to anything. One guy's a bit shy, one woman's a bit rigid, the main male protagonist is a bit hippie. They're all bland and rather lifeless.

Now, I can't say the movie offers nothing. It offers an alternative perspective to the rigid sexuality of the 50s and how new-age ideas on sexuality can (or perhaps were beginning to?) seep into the prudish middle classes. There's also an exploration of the meaning of love, but it doesn't really feel sincere. Everyone just accepts things sooner or later. Perhaps that was the point - it was much more unnatural to put up the rigid structures in the first place than to break them down.

As for the treatment of sexuality itself, it now seems distant, dated, even jejune. Now the positioning of the very predictable climax of the film seems laughable. Too little, too late. These days it would come in the middle or the beginning or outright just be mentioned offhand as something normal in a film, whereas here it seems to have been the impressive finishing blow in 1969.

Honourable Mentions: Office Space (1999). In this movie the main female protagonist has her outlook on life changed by an odd psychotherapeutic retreat her. It's the same basic situation in Office Space, where the high-strung neurotic engineer changes his outlook on life and in turn experiences a very significant improvement in quality of life.

Some time ago I reviewed a film directed by Lars Von Trier called Antichrist (2009) and I laughed at it for its pretentious and inappropriate use of symbolism, sex, black-and-white scenes, and slow motion to utterly confuse the audience in a blitzkrieg-style assault (what he and some other European critics may call "art").

Here we have one of the few movies that actually does confusing modernist art right, but not in tawdry ways like less competent directors do.

It has, without a doubt, the most masterful use of subtlety I have ever seen. You often can't tell what's going on, but two characters looking at each other (or not looking at each other), in a tense way or at a critical moment just gives an impression that something important is boiling just under the surface and exploding behind the scenes.

The world these people inhabit would have been considered absurd and confusing just a few decades prior by the majority of the population in USA today and perhaps isn't even palatable to the majority today. Yet it's consistent and believable. And the way it accomplishes this environment is through sex, but unlike the pretentious and unskilled, it doesn't need to show stills of O faces or slow-motion genitals to do it. And again, delightfully indirect, without ever stating it directly. These people believe in free love, they eschew rules and order. They do what they want and who they want whenever they want. Sure, there are some hard feelings here and there, but freedom and love are paramount.

And it's not just the sex. When a friend needs help he has no problem asking for as much as he need and no one thinks to deny it him. The members of the group come and go as they please. Emotions are let fly loose. When a man strikes his wife, members of the tribe are upset, but all that happens is that he's told to cool it whereas this would be such a traumatic or dramatic scene in any other movie. But the subtext is that they're his emotions and he's entitled to them.

Arlo Guthrie gives one of the greatest acting performances I've seen as himself. He has the upper layer of that cool apathy of the confident artist that permeates the whole tone of the movie (and mirrors the tone of the song on which it's based), while still showing subtle sincere emotion throughout the film, as aptly in times of joy as those of sorrow.

Good work from Officer Obie, too, who also played himself and does the stereotypical gruff policeman to perfection. He's somehow a sympathetic character despite the film very clearly divulging that police are extremely unsympathetic to this long-haired communalistic subculture.

The film has some boring points and unnecessary digressions. Few of the characters are well-developed, but for the most part that works because they're just presented as typical humans with urges, desires, jealousies, stresses, ups and downs.

Unexpectedly sad, but not a surprising ending. I thought they had it all. Is it just that sadness is just a fact of life no matter what? Or was it that there was something missing in their lives?

Honourable Mentions: Simpsons Season 11, Episode 11: Faith Off (2000). Bart is a faith healer and the sailor character comes to him for help with his "crippling depression", which Bart says he can't cure. As he's walking away, Bart wonders aloud "And I thought he had it all." I got the same feeling as this film came to a close. They look like and usually act like they don't have a care in the world, but it's almost as if they've traded something valuable for freedom and community.

We often tout realism in art or, perhaps more commonly, we conversely grouse about how this or that work of art is not realistic enough. Except for the initial setup of the romance, The Sterile Cuckoo is otherwise very realistic.

Pookie Adams strikes up a conversation with a random guy at a bus stop. It turns out they're going to the same general area for college.

She latches on to him for dear life, apparently at random because he doesn't talk to her much or otherwise even show any interest in her.

It turns out Pookie is an antisocial outcast while the guy is a normie who wants to have the normal college experience - have some fun, study to please his parents, meet new people, not get into much trouble, etc.

The guy relents at Pookie's stubbornness and the two keep clashing over many things, with Pookie clearly becoming attached to the guy and clearly needing that attachment in a pathological way.

Very realistic, with the needy and crazy Pookie really conveying that type of person well and the guy continually flabbergasted and nervous, sort of being swept away by her attention but also finding her and her immense amount of psychological baggage stifling and repellent. The romance between the two is also sincere. They behave awkwardly and they seem confused and innocent about many things.

Unfortunately, truth itself does necessarily provide the best sort of entertainment at all times. It's a long and boring film, with lots of pointless empty space. While all three of the principal actors (Pookie, boyfriend, and boyfriend's roommate) give great acting performances, neither pookie nor the boyfriend are very compelling. Pookie has a seething frustration and discontent that never quite goes anywhere except makes boyfriend a little uncomfortable. Boyfriend, is, of course, completely boring and normal and hardly does anything other than react uncomfortably to things.

Tim McIntire gives a great performance as roommate, even though he's on camera less than 10% of the time. In fact, I saw a website where he was lauded as one of the actors that should have been famous but wasn't (he died fairly young). And yes, I agree, he's good. I saw it from his first scene.

One of the realest movies I've seen, but also too boring and pointless to recommend. Although if you have a personal connection to the subject matter you'll probably appreciate seeing your life on screen much more.

Honourable Mentions: Down and Dirty Duck (1974). 8th greatest movie of all time. A bildingsroman about a lewd Duck teaching a lame guy how to be a man.

A Better Tomorrow (1986) was a tidy and stylish little violent action flick with an unforgettable soundtrack consisting of a single monstrously good city pop track.

Just 3 years later director John Woo has descended into Bullet in the Head (1990), an attempt at an action epic that turns out to be virtually a rehash of old ideas (even with some of the old actors) but done much more poorly and haphazardly.

The plot is as bizarre as the editing and the abrupt changes in tone. The film starts out as something that looks like a cheap greaser film or martial arts film with a group of three young(ish? - I think these actors are in their late 20s or early 30s by this point even though they act and talk like teenagers) friends beating up on some other group to a rock n roll classic. And I think that's the last of their fist fighting days or mention, for woo seems to have gotten nervous and later on reverts back to using gun violence to resolve every problem. Why not? It's more violent, flashier, sure.

Then they do some thing, do some other thing, there's a marriage, some pointless family drama that barely comes up for a few seconds... In short, for no good reason they end up in urban Vietnam and then the jungles of Vietnam during the Vietnam war on the set of Rambo and involved in an international conspiracy, aided along the way by magical Buddhist monks and the US military. Some new characters come out of left field and everyone acts like they know each other but it's terribly confusing to the audience.

All the while the villain from A Better Tomorrow goes into full one-dimensional mode and becomes obsessed with gold. By the end of the movie, having started out as a sort of labouring street rat he somehow goes on to become the CEO of a large corporation and is said to be an expert in financial law even though the events of this part of the film seem to take place only a few years after his adventures in the jungles of NAM. Kind of quick turnaround time for becoming a legal expert, respectable suit, and CEO.

Every part of this disjointed film is rushed and the plots and character development only make sense inside of the mind of John Woo, which, from the incomplete and jarring way the plot is written must have the mind of an infant. This is quite a terrible movie and a far cry from A Better Tomorrow.

Honourable Mentions: A Better Tomorrow II (1987). This is not, however, John Woo's worst film that I've seen. The direct sequel to A Better Tomorrow is somehow worse and even more chyldish.

The plot on this one is empty and kind of flimsy.

Nothing is well-developed and everything is manufactured. There's a pointless romance that springs up for no apparent reason (although the main female protagonist and her husband really don't have any chemistry) and people die or go crazy without any backstory. The moment where I knew I was watching an artificial tearjerker was when the female protagonist just happens to meet her friend who's leaning against a utility pole staring forlornly at the sea after a traumatic experience. How poetic, but how very posed.

It's about Vietnam war veterans, I suppose, but you hardly see any scenes actually set or Vietnam and certainly there's no violence at all to speak of.

It's clearly supposed to be an anti-war film but we frankly forget about the whole thing as we watch the protagonists kind of gently sway into a relationship and live a calm and pleasant life. And when we do get some scenes of people suffering because of the war, they're either short or just emotionally distraught guys vaguely stuttering about how the war was bad. There's even a PTSD scene that lasts like 5 seconds before the guy calms down.

Can't say it was boring, but it's very long and lacks any punch. It does have a sort of calming effect, though, like a Pink Floyd song.

And on that note, I will also add that the soundtrack was excellent. Lots of serene 70s/60s rock.

Honourable Mentions: The Beast of War (1988). Not everyone deals with war by responding with guilt and PTSD. The tank commander in The Beast of War is a very compelling character. War has clearly loosened some of his screws and the man seems to be suffering, but he's still participating with a joyless yet determined attitude of maximum cruelty and hatred. A great film about the most senseless of wars.

I've heard there's a movie called North (1994) where Elijah Wood travels the world encountering oversimplified and offensive stereotypes. Well, here we have North: Japanese Edition.

I always remember this movie because of its dark and gritty atmosphere. I can't fault it for that. This film is absolutely set in an obscure Tokyo of eternal night lit only by pale neon glows; Douglas eternally sports a black leather jacket and most of the other characters are dressed like industrial goths; even the daytime scenes, of which there are a few, look so cloudy and dirty that it looks like some post-apocalyptic world after the bomb was dropped and created a persistent nucular cloud.

But the film is unintentionally funny in its zeal to cover every single sensationalist stereotype skewed, exaggerated, and exported for foreign consumption. Geishas? Check. Psychopathic yakuza that cut off their pinkies? Check. Motorcycle gangs, Dekotora trucks, samurai swords, traditional martial arts - yeah, you got it.

Douglas' partner in a dashing Andy Garcia at the top of his game even suffers death by ethnic cliche number 22.

Then we have the final master stroke near the end that gives the film its title. You guessed it. As one Japanese character erratically informs us, it turns out that, in a shocking twist, that all of the events of the movie were caused by the butterfly effect stemming from the dropping of the BOMB on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. :O

Inane script and kind of dumb portrayal of the Japanese, but it's got a lot of good points, especially in the ambience, acting, and general artistic direction. At least visually you aren't likely to forget it any time soon.

Honourable Mentions: Black Rain (1989). This movie inappropriately highjacked this name for no reason other than to put a final cherry on top of the stereotype sundae. A Japanese movie with this name (and more appropriately titled, since it was actually about the nucular bombing of Japan) had the unfortunate fate of coming out the same year, so it makes it very difficult to find it in English. RIP Real Black Rain (1989).

This film is one of those infamous pieces of popular culture from the 80s that actually deserves its popularity. It's one of the top action movies of all time.

The premise is simple - inappropriate policing pushes a man who probably wasn't in too great mental shape over the edge and he wreaks havoc on a small town.

Amidst the background of a beautiful mountain forest, you get some exciting scenes of forest guerilla warfare which then spill back over into the town. At first Rambo is dressed normally but he slowly begins to look like the movie poster and you barely even notice it. At some point you see him in full guerilla regalia and it looks absolutely outlandish.

But that highlights Stallone's "deer caught in headlights" style of acting for Rambo in what is the performance of his career. Less is more here and Stallone simply looking sullen and stubborn throughout most of the film speaks volumes. Much has been made of the tortured final dialogue that betrays a very mentally distraught man. I found it effective, but really a bit slurry. It suffered from the delivery. No, Stallone's best performance is conveyed in silence while looking dead inside.

The dialogue is a little bit cheesy sometimes, but honestly lots of bang for your buck.

Honourable Mentions: Lonely are the Brave (1962). I bet you didn't know First Blood was a remake. Well, surprise!

George C Scott sports his ugly mug and gruff demeanor expertly in another Victorian Classic (he aptly played Scrooge in a competent adaptation of A Christmas Carol). Although he looks a little older than Rochester's late 30's as envisioned by Bronte, I can't really imagine anyone doing her vision more justice. Leaps and bounds better than the 2015 adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd that sported some sort of male model playing Hardy's homely Gabriel Oak.

The actress playing Jane, while also visibly older than the teenaged Jane of the novel, is expertly cast; she's not exactly ugly as Jane seems to have been meant to be, but she does have Jane's restrained passion and she very much fills hearts with compassion, embodying that weathered but also lonely personality that you'd expect me an adult raised in an orphanage to have.

If you love the book, you'll love this version, no doubt. It's got the casting and the settings.

Unfortunately, if you're not just singing along to a well-known tune with knowledge of the source material, you might be confused. The whole novel is covered here, which means that the story is very much simplified and you have to already know what's between the lines to really see its brilliance as a supplement to the novel. We never see Jane fall in love with Rochester, nor vice versa. In fact, the movie just lunges from the initially prickly Rochester to the two protagonists' emotional proximity with little development or explanation. Along the same lines, Rochester remains a rather brusque fellow throughout and he doesn't really earn the audience's endearment.

If you know and like the book, it's a highly fitting companion, though.

Honourable Mentions: Hardcore (1979). Scott plays a father looking for his daughter amongst the pornographic rubble of a decadent Los Angeles. Along the way he develops a somewhat paternal fondness from a young working woman. I don't think it's an actual romance - perhaps he just sees his daughter in her - even though there are hints, but it's the same dynamic and I think makes for a very nice romantic story - an older man with a tough outer shell comes to fill the emptiness of a lost and lonely woman as they grow close to each other through the course of the work.

Why are people enabling this person?

A woman is absolutely obsessed with honoring the memory of Richard III and rehabilitating him, so much so that she joins a club to do it, raises a lot of money, and I think she even quits her job to devote herself to it. Those might be spoilers since no one would be able to make up such an insane plot, but this is based on a true story.

Anyway, lots of people are against her, as usual. Many people don't want her to pursue her "dream", so it's one of those movies: "nobody believed in me but I showed them. I did that thing they said I shouldn't or couldn't do. LOVE ME!"

The issue is that usually the thing which the person wants to do is.. I don't know... something people would find significant, useful, or interesting? Can't imagine too many people care either way whether Richard III was good, bad, hunchback, or straight as an arrow. Although given that like half the characters in the movie are named "Richard," maybe it's more important in England?

Anyway, this woman is not well. She makes up a disability called "chronic fatigue syndrome." Instead of working better or bringing new skills to the table she becomes indignant when she's passed up for a promotion for fresh blood. She insists Richard's body is in a specific point in the plot of land they're digging just because "she has a hunch." She turns out to be right by sheer luck. In short, she falls into a certain "type" of person. To wit, a person who is stubborn, irrational, and entitled. We all know someone like that.

Then someone else takes the credit for the discovery and this non-issue becomes a maudlin drama about justice because of that and... I don't know. This is just a movie archetype: nobody believed in her but she trudged on and people were mean to her but she won in the end. *claps*

I think that one guy in the Benz who she chastised for thinking Richard III was a villain had the right response to this woman. Stare at her in disbelief for a few seconds, roll up the window, drive away, and continue with your own life. It's not worth it to even engage.

Honourable Mentons 1: There was a series on documentaries PBS called "In Pursuit of Excellent" (2007) where they would showcase people with real hobbies, such as collecting corpses of ferrets. A marvelous idea and equally brilliant execution. We like to gawk at people who devote their lives to things that are not mainstream. This is basically In Pursuit of Excellence: The Movie and so I think it's great from a pitiful/comedic perspective.

Honourable Mentions 2: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007) is one of my favourite movies. It's documentary about two guys who are gutter wrestling to be recognised as the world champion on the Donkey Kong arcade game. Again, this movie is very much like that one despite pretending to be a serious drama, and so I was pretty well entertained by it.