pppatty

It's probably a lifetime since I last watched this movie and I had forgotten what an effective combination of joyous music and tear-wrenching drama it is.  While it is almost certainly a bowdlerised biopic and not just a loosely-based recreation of the life of musician Loring 'Red' Nichols, it makes for a more than enjoyable film.  Now nearly totally forgotten, Nichols' touring jazz band in the 1930s furnished the first major gigs, if the movie is to be believed, for Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey... Read Full Story

The above silent film was recently restored from an old nitrate print in the BFI's Archives fleshed out with missing footage from a George Eastman House 16mm print and it premiered at the last London Film Festival.  We thought about applying for tickets, but our experience with previous similar premieres put us off -- namely waiting for ages while all the invited so-called VIPs drifted in to take the best seats and then suffering through a plethora of self-congratulatory speeches before the... Read Full Story

Since his death a few weeks ago, the BBC (but not any of the other channels) have shown several films, two of his brilliant musical biopics made for television, and a documentary in tribute to the flamboyant British director Ken Russell.  I have had mixed feelings about his feature films, previously only having acquired copies of "Billion Dollar Brain" (1967), "The Devils" (1971), and "Tommy" (1975) from his best British period, plus two unusual and fascinating movies from his brief... Read Full Story

If you go back in my archives you will find a review in June 2011 for director Shion Sono's previous film "Love Exposure".  http://pppatty.blogspot.com/2011/06/not-in-english-language.html I said at the time that I had only previously seen the director's weird 2007 flick "Hair Extensions" about mutant murderous hair (!) and that I really needed to explore his back catalogue, especially the well-thought of "Suicide Club" from 2000.  Well, I never did do anything about this, although I made a... Read Full Story

One hardly knows what to expect from a Clint Eastwood-directed film.  The 81-year old director seems to have no trouble keeping up his incredible pace of roughly one new movie per year -- but unlike his earlier output of westerns and thrillers, he now seems eager to try his hand on a surprising variety of subjects.  Since his geriatric comedy "Space Cowboys" in 2000, he has given us the impressive Pacific war diptych of "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima", a Nelson Mandela... Read Full Story

Having seen the original Swedish film from 2009 twice, as well as the two sequels, and having read all three books, I expected David Fincher's American remake to verge on the superfluous.  I must confess, however, that he has made a thoroughly enjoyable film.  I have liked but not gone overboard on his previous films, with the possible exception of "Benjamin Button" in 2008, but he has brought a professional gloss to this remake which was somehow lacking in the Swedish original.  The first... Read Full Story

Since there was so little new of interest on the box I found myself re-watching a number of previously seen flicks with surprisingly mixed reactions -- some movies seem to age reasonably well (and not just the so-called 'classics') while others are even more boring the second time around.  Let's consider one from each category: Love Actually (2003):  I asked my house guests if there was any one movie from my sprawling collection that they would like to see and the l2-year old in the party... Read Full Story

In my neverending attempt to view any movie not previously seen I get through a silly number of films made for television.  However even I can't face the myriad Christmas-themed movies being flogged at this time of the year on dedicated so-called 'Christmas Channels', although I will make an exception for the delightful Doris Roberts in the Mrs. Miracle flicks. And while many TVMs are pretty disposable, occasionally one finds something really worth seeing like the above title. For a start... Read Full Story

It sometimes feels as if the majority of the foreign language films I view are French, but this is really not the case, since I also seem to be attracted by many Far Eastern movies in a variety of languages plus a fair assortment of flicks from other nations.  The French factor is also slightly on the wane at the moment since the CineMoi channel that I have raved about previously has not managed to premiere more than two new offerings since the summer -- and yes, I have had a moan at them for... Read Full Story

Martin Scorsese truly deserves the plaudits that his latest film has been garnering and there is so much that is truly wonderful about it.  However it is not a perfect 10 on my scoreboard. For a start, I think his use of 3D techniques in the film's creation is quite possibly the best use of this format ever -- even James Cameron's "Avatar" falls into a close second place.  Unlike so many recent releases where the aim seems to be to throw as many objects at the viewer as possibly, harking back... Read Full Story