Author Archives: david nerlich

Haywire

Soderbergh has a stab at affected genre in this revisitation of Nikita without the bondage, or Bourne without the amnesia. You know the story, and once again the moral is… maybe don’t double cross your highly trained martial arts super

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Haywire

Soderbergh has a stab at affected genre in this revisitation of Nikita without the bondage, or Bourne without the amnesia. You know the story, and once again the moral is… maybe don’t double cross your highly trained martial arts super

/ No comments

Shame

This temporally stretched essay on sex addiction seems more concerned with effects than causes, though an abusive past is indicated for two siblings, played by Fassbender and Mulligan. The classy cast, stylish minimalism and enough things going wrong sustain tension

/ 4 Comments

Shame

This temporally stretched essay on sex addiction seems more concerned with effects than causes, though an abusive past is indicated for two siblings, played by Fassbender and Mulligan. The classy cast, stylish minimalism and enough things going wrong sustain tension

/ 4 Comments

Martha Marcy May Marlene

To convey one’s mood in seventeen syllables is very diffic. That’s a haiku by John Cooper Clarke. You do and you don’t need that last syllable. To convey ones idea in 3 acts can be like that too. Martha Marcy

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Martha Marcy May Marlene

To convey one’s mood in seventeen syllables is very diffic. That’s a haiku by John Cooper Clarke. You do and you don’t need that last syllable. To convey ones idea in 3 acts can be like that too. Martha Marcy

/ No comments

Drive

There are many movie car chases but hardly any good ones. Most are placeholders where the only thing moving fast is the cutting. Drive nods its head to 1968 so hard it risks whiplash as a fastback 2008 Bullitt Mustang

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Drive

There are many movie car chases but hardly any good ones. Most are placeholders where the only thing moving fast is the cutting. Drive nods its head to 1968 so hard it risks whiplash as a fastback 2008 Bullitt Mustang

/ No comments

I Melt with You

A suicidally downbeat Big Chill for men, exploring the disappointment inherent to middle age. You grow up expecting the world but in the end you only get a life, and these forty-something school buddies on a vacation bender are grief

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I Melt with You

A suicidally downbeat Big Chill for men, exploring the disappointment inherent to middle age. You grow up expecting the world but in the end you only get a life, and these forty-something school buddies on a vacation bender are grief

/ No comments

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Fincher’s version of this curious fantasy about a young woman serial raped by father figures, first within the family and then by the state. Not quite moving on, she opts for a steamy relationship with her middle aged employer. To

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Fincher’s version of this curious fantasy about a young woman serial raped by father figures, first within the family and then by the state. Not quite moving on, she opts for a steamy relationship with her middle aged employer. To

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The Grey

The Edge with wolves. And snow. Some stylish direction inspires high hopes – later deflated as this mortality tale fails to grasp a theme worthy of the life and death struggle its characters face after their plane crashes in the

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The Grey

The Edge with wolves. And snow. Some stylish direction inspires high hopes – later deflated as this mortality tale fails to grasp a theme worthy of the life and death struggle its characters face after their plane crashes in the

/ No comments

The Ward

John Carpenter’s not really triumphal 10 year return to the screen. There was a good idea in here somewhere but what we mostly get is people running. This has more running than Apocalypto. This time its chicks in a psych

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The Ward

John Carpenter’s not really triumphal 10 year return to the screen. There was a good idea in here somewhere but what we mostly get is people running. This has more running than Apocalypto. This time its chicks in a psych

/ No comments

Somewhere

Fuck story. The world’s full of stories. Who needs another one, right? Sofia Coppola decides instead to make a melting still, a not dry nature morte portrait of an LA actor (Stephen Dorff) surprised by success, who gets everything he

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Somewhere

Fuck story. The world’s full of stories. Who needs another one, right? Sofia Coppola decides instead to make a melting still, a not dry nature morte portrait of an LA actor (Stephen Dorff) surprised by success, who gets everything he

/ No comments

Blue Valentine

Watch the love die and wonder why. No winners in this study of romantic failure. Unable to recommend this truthful well acted tragedy as its point escaped me. Perhaps what tragedies need to do is establish at the outset that

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Blue Valentine

Watch the love die and wonder why. No winners in this study of romantic failure. Unable to recommend this truthful well acted tragedy as its point escaped me. Perhaps what tragedies need to do is establish at the outset that

/ One Comment

Prometheus

The crew of the starship Prometheus are roused from cryo-sleep to ask the big questions. Who are we? Why are we here? Yes they’re really asking those questions. None of them seem to know who anyone else is or why

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Prometheus

The crew of the starship Prometheus are roused from cryo-sleep to ask the big questions. Who are we? Why are we here? Yes they’re really asking those questions. None of them seem to know who anyone else is or why

/ 4 Comments

The Help

Has there been a bad film about the US civil rights movement? The most self critiical nation on earth once again finds its terrible race karma a bottomless wellspring of pungent narrative. Does amply what it sets out to do

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The Help

Has there been a bad film about the US civil rights movement? The most self critiical nation on earth once again finds its terrible race karma a bottomless wellspring of pungent narrative. Does amply what it sets out to do

/ No comments

X

Direction outshines story as Jon Hewitt produces another genre vs art house mashup that works really well bar an action scramble near the end to tie up the plot at the expense of its themes. The unstoppable baddy resembles a

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X

Direction outshines story as Jon Hewitt produces another genre vs art house mashup that works really well bar an action scramble near the end to tie up the plot at the expense of its themes. The unstoppable baddy resembles a

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Restless

Starts out looking like an age-appropriate revision of Harold and Maude, as emotionally imploded funeral crasher Henry Hopper somehow manages to get stalked by a puckish, gossamer Mia Wasikowska. Fans of Gus Van Sant’s ouevre of slow will find this

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Restless

Starts out looking like an age-appropriate revision of Harold and Maude, as emotionally imploded funeral crasher Henry Hopper somehow manages to get stalked by a puckish, gossamer Mia Wasikowska. Fans of Gus Van Sant’s ouevre of slow will find this

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The Descendants

Take a bleak premise about infidelity and terminal comas and drizzle with saccharine. Clooney gets an oscar nomination for one of his most laboured and least convincing performances. Maybe it was really for The American. Watchable drama about family and

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The Descendants

Take a bleak premise about infidelity and terminal comas and drizzle with saccharine. Clooney gets an oscar nomination for one of his most laboured and least convincing performances. Maybe it was really for The American. Watchable drama about family and

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The Adventures of Tintin

This one divides the room, leaving me on the side that was waiting for the frenetic more is less dynamism to finally exhaust itself and allow me to leave the cinema. There was a hero’s journey in here somewhere, with

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The Adventures of Tintin

This one divides the room, leaving me on the side that was waiting for the frenetic more is less dynamism to finally exhaust itself and allow me to leave the cinema. There was a hero’s journey in here somewhere, with

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The Iron Lady

Thatcher without the thatcherism? It’s been described thus but the thatcherism is actually right there in the opening scene as a pinstriped yuppie queue-jumps doddering Maggie at the corner shop. Meryl earns her oscar and maintains a tradition of wins

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The Iron Lady

Thatcher without the thatcherism? It’s been described thus but the thatcherism is actually right there in the opening scene as a pinstriped yuppie queue-jumps doddering Maggie at the corner shop. Meryl earns her oscar and maintains a tradition of wins

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The Ides of March

Clooney adapts, directs and acts in a story outlining all the reasons why he’s unlikely to run for President. With Gosling as The Prince.

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The Ides of March

Clooney adapts, directs and acts in a story outlining all the reasons why he’s unlikely to run for President. With Gosling as The Prince.

/ One Comment

Melancholia

This appears for the first hour to be a good old fashioned Bunuel-style thrashing of the bourgeoisie and everything it holds sacred, with rogue ops courtesy of rampaging bridezilla, Dunst. Then Melancholia’s orbit tightens into an understated spiral of high

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Melancholia

This appears for the first hour to be a good old fashioned Bunuel-style thrashing of the bourgeoisie and everything it holds sacred, with rogue ops courtesy of rampaging bridezilla, Dunst. Then Melancholia’s orbit tightens into an understated spiral of high

/ 2 Comments

Midnight in Paris

Owen Wilson is the 10th Woody, you know like David Tennant is the 10th Doctor.  The first Woody began deploying effigies of himself when they started to say he had grown too old too disgracefully. Hell, he even married Rosemary’s

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Midnight in Paris

Owen Wilson is the 10th Woody, you know like David Tennant is the 10th Doctor.  The first Woody began deploying effigies of himself when they started to say he had grown too old too disgracefully. Hell, he even married Rosemary’s

/ One Comment