Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Release date: 16 January 2009 (Sundance Film Festival)

Precious is a film that demands watching and it suffers from the same challenge to review Brokeback Mountain wrought in that - to be politically correct - one is forced to be positive about the movie noting the subject matter. You can't very well bash a black overweight teenager with two children compliments of her father and a mother who is violently punishing her as a way to deal with her own guilt. And poor Precious is struggling with literacy to boot. All we need added is a drug-addled sibling and a gay cousin and we'd have a real wing-dinger of a movie. Talk about opera! That all said, this film could have been a Sunday night at the movies train-wreck and it does suffer from its own hubris, but on the whole, it gives us two characters well drawn despite their brutal circumstances, filmed - thanks to Lee Daniels - in an MTV style that helps balance the brooding woe. Gabourey Sidbe is competent in her role as the center of this opera but the movie is Mo'Nique's as the mother who's wandered so far down a path darkly that when she finally sees the light, it is too late. While hardly inspirational, Precious is a good film that missed great film thanks squarely to Sapphire's own material.

My rating 8 out of 10.

The Untouchables

Release date: 2 June 1987 (New York City, USA)

This is a classic crime story filmed classically by director Brian De Palma. The Untouchables recounts the adventures of Treasury Department agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and his near obsession in bringing Chicago gang leader Al Capone (Robert De Niro) to justice. Ness pulls together a ragtag team including Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery), George Stone (Andy Garcia) and accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) to the deed done. Along the way he battles with Capone's henchman Frank Nitti (Billy Drago), is tempted into corruption and sees members of his team picked off by the violence that was Chicago in the early 1930s. While I continue to find the music of this film obtrusive to the nth degree, De Palma has captured the drama perfectly, despite the violence, and every star is pitch perfect, despite Costner's rather one-dimensional approach.

For showing us the seedy side of an ugly America, my rating 8 out of 10.

King Kong

Release date: 5 December 2005 (New York City, USA)

What does one do after filming, arguably, the greatest trilogy of all time? If you're director Peter Jackson you tackle King Kong but of course. Jackson's version of King Kong stays true to the original and takes it to new heights - and depths - with thanks to the wonder that is CG!. When struggling vaudeville actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is picked up by the morally-bereft filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) and convinced to join him on a steamer to Singapore, the stage is set. Denham has a layover planned en route to the notorious Skull Island and there, with the convenient advent of a quick love affair between Darrow and screen writer Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody), the King Kong adventure really takes shape. Jackson pulls out all the stops and gives us an action packed, seat-of-your-pants ride alla Jurassic Park that towers above the wooden acting of Black (who is just dreadful) and Brody (who's ability to convey any passion is as empty as King Kong is tall). But who cares really, the story here is about Kong and his girl and that story sells this film. While it was beauty that killed the beast true, the real beauty here is in Jackson's magnificent world.

My rating for the thrill of it all 9 out of 10.

Under the Tuscan Sun

Release date: 20 September 2003 (USA)

Under the Tuscan Sun can be added to a short list of films so quintessential in their ability to portray areas of Italy they've become screen gems - A Room With a View, Death in Venice and Cinema Paradiso are three that pop immediately to mind. Directed by Audrey Wells, it stars Diane Lane as Frances, a recently divorced San Franciscan who builds a new life by buying a crumbling Italian villa while on a bus tour of Tuscany. Suspend reality sure. With the help of a local restate agent, she cobbles together a misfit crew of contractors to help her restore the villa and there, amid the ruins and rain, she finds a new lease on life that includes a new lover, Marcello (Raoul Bova), and the arrival of her best friend Patti (Sandra Oh) with baby in tow. Based on Frances Mayes' novel of the same, Under the Tuscan Sun brims with joy and the truth there is always life after trauma.

My rating 9 out of 10.

Antitrust

Release date: 12 January 2001 (USA)

Antitrust requires us to suspend reality and believe the next big computer breakthrough rests with a fresh-from-high-school-tech-geek Ryan Philippe (as Milo) recruited to work for Tim Robbins (as the Bill Gates-like bad guy, Gary Winston). This thriller is directed by Peter Howitt and it starts strong and get the viewer hooked before crashing - so to speak - as it morphs from being a War Games-like thriller (without the social commentary edge) to a Mission Impossible escapade and a woefully bad one at at. When Rachel Leigh Cook, who stars as Milo's conniving girlfriend with a secret life Lisa, adds her twist to the story half way through, we're beyond really caring what happens but like a computer stuck with a virus, we sit and watch it in befuddled awe till the screen goes black. Thankfully black.

For giving us 2 hours of blatantly anti-Microsoft bashing posing as a film, my rating 5 out of 10.

Pitch Black

Release date: 18 February 2000 (USA)

A film built on the back of its predecessors, Pitch Black roots itself on the whatever-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong vein of alien movie-making. Cue spacecraft on deep space mission. Cue crew on said spacecraft in hibernation. Cue one member of the crew actually a mean prisoner who should have been executed eons ago. Cue children. Cue crash landing of said spacecraft on creepy planet with too many suns and a perpetual Saharan look. And, of course, cue alien wasplike creatures that are hungry for them all when the suns finally drop below the horizon and plunge our actors in Pitch Black. Directed by David Twohy, the film is essentially a vehicle for Vin Diesel (as bad guy with no morals or heart Richard Riddick) and - frankly - it all works well. Diesel is good going about his duties and the film uses light and dark and shadow perfectly. While the character development pales|fails (take your pick), there is enough suspense and alien creepiness to make even the die hard tough guy turn on a light to rid themselves of the black.

My rating 7 out of 10.

Where the Wild Things Are

Release date: 13 October 2009 (New York City, New York)

Based on Maurice Sendak's classic illustrated picture book, director Spike Jonze partners with screenwriter David Eggers to give Sendak's word-sparse book some meat. When lonely 9-year-old Max (Max Records) heads out from his home after a tiff with his mother (Catherine Keener) he sails into the fabled world of the wild things and becomes their king. But with kingship comes great responsibility and Max soon realizes having control is not what it's cracked up to be. Where the Wild Things Are works exceptionally well on the visual level - the look and feel Jonze creates, opting to use life-sized puppets in lieu of CGI, is breathtaking. But Sendak's slim tome works better with fewer words. The Max that emerges on screen is not the Max I remember as my father read the story to me. He is wilder and meaner, but perhaps that is Jonze point and we are meant to lose the innocence of childhood when we interact with the world of real life where the wild things lurk.

My rating for capturing the fulsome imagined world I remember as a child, 7 out of 10.

Gigli

Release date: 27 July 2003 (USA)

Where to start? With the fact this movie is apparently a vehicle to prove Ben Affleck has the power to turn gay women (in particular Jennifer Lopez who stars as Ricki) straight? With the fact this movie is apparently a vehicle for Jennifer Lopez to show off her outstanding yoga skills while simultaneously speaking raunchy lines about being a lesbian? With the fact, perhaps, that this movie apparently believes it has even one iota of interesting storyline to share with us? Nah, how about we just start and end with the rating noting just how embarrassing this Martin Brest directed stinker of a movie is.

With a nod to Justin Bartha who stars as the mentally challenged lad, Brian, and does a good job, there's nothing here to warrant anything but my rating of 0 out of 10. Avoid.

The Boys Are Back

Release date: 15 September 2009 (Toronto International Film Festival)

Clive Owen stars as Joe Warr, an Australian sports reporter and father coming to terms with the tragic death of his second wife, and the realities that come with being a suddenly single father to his 6-year-old Artie (Nicholas McAnulty) and his teenage son Harry (George MacKay) who moves from the dreary olde England to Australia to live with his father. While treacly movies like this are a dime a dozen, and while there's certainly nothing new here - with the confused father taking to drink; the grieving grandmother trying to replace her daughter by interfering in the lads lives; the rush of scenes to male bond and the inevitable final act where everyone makes up - The Boys Are Back is saved by Owen's solid acting and director Scott Hicks' fine camera work. It's all mildly entertaining if you can get past the aggravation you feel wanting to slap the kids senseless when they get whiny.

My rating 6 out of 10.

District 9

Release date: 13 August 2009 (Australia)

This is an alien action movie with a decidedly different angle. We humans have corralled the aliens - whom we call "Prawns" - into apartheid-like slums outside Johannesburg as their wondrous mothership seems to have lost its get-up-and-go. Stranded and abandoned for 20 years, the government of the day decides to evict the Prawns and contracts out the task to uber-evil Multi-National United, under the initially hapless leadership of Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) who just happens to be married to the boss's daughter. When Wikus is accidentally sprayed with a Prawn aerosol in the eviction, he soon starts morphing into a Prawn himself and that's when the fun begins. Written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, from this point forward, District 9 plays like a Terminator movie with about a third the bravado and double the excitement. District 9 is a decidedly different alien flick with great CGI moments and a plot both quirky and believable enough to work.

My rating 8 out of 10.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Release date: 1 May 2009 (London, UK)

This silliness is the latest output from Matthew McConaughey, who just seems to have forgotten: 1) how to act, and 2) land himself in a good film. Frankly, I'm at a loss where to even begin to rate this blatantly unfunny rip off of Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol. McConaughey stars as Connor Mead, a superstar photographer cum womanizer. On the eve of his brother Paul's (Breckin Meyer) wedding to bridezilla, Connor is visited by three former girlfriend ghosts who make him realize he had the hots for Jenny (an underused Jennifer Garner) all along. Even Michael Douglas stops by looking for a quick pay cheque playing Uncle Wayne, a sort of Hugh Hefener character that starts Connor on his path to ill repute.

With little comedy and even less romance this is a ghost of a film from the get go and gets my rating of 3 out of 10.

Inglourious Basterds

Release date: 20 May 2009 (Cannes Film Festival)

Quentin Tarantino steps away from his usual self-indulgent - granted great - film-making to give us a masterpiece. Inglourious Basterds is a perfectly scripted fantasy complete with over-the-top characters that are so close to the edge, they border on farcical. But that's the point. In QT's version of World War II, the good guys embodied by a pack of Jewish Nazi killers called 'The Basterds', headed by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), work behind the German lines to scalp Nazis and plot - with the help of a beautiful theater owner Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) - to blow up the entire German High Command at a movie premier in Paris. Much has been writ about the violence in Inglourious Basterds and there is plenty of grisly bits believe me, but the story in all its richness and humour and gorgeous filming, makes it worth the ride. QT has worked magic out of every actor in this film and even he-who-cannot-act, Brad Pitt, gives us a damn decent performance (killing me though it does to admit). Christoph Waltz is the film's star, evoking a performance as SS Officer Col. Hans Landa, that is so cold and odd and brilliant it surely crosses the line and in doing so becomes, iconic. In this reviewer's humble opinion, no director yet has manufactured so perfect an opening act of any film as QT gives us in Chapter One: "Once Upon a Time .......... In Nazi Occupied France (1941)". It is utterly mesmerising, and the finest example of the film-maker's art ever captured.

A film not to be missed warrants my rating of 10 out of 10.

Love Laughs at Andy Hardy

Release date: 25 December 1947, (Los Angeles, USA)

Often considered to be the most popular group of films every made by MGM, the Andy Hardy series (sixteen films spanning 10 years) starred Mickey Rooney as the lad with a never-ending series of romantic escapades from which his father Judge Hardy (initially Lionel Barrymore; later Lewis Stone) - wise, understanding and kind long before the arrival of Mr. Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver - rescued him. Directed by Willis Goldbeck in 1946, Love Laughs at Andy Hardy was the final film of the series (save a reunion film made in 1953). What is striking in these films is the pure simplicity of a way of life in America long since gone. In this romp, Andy's heart is severely wounded when his girlfriend Kay Wilson (Bonita Granville) announces she is marrying her guardian. As the head of Wainright College's Ball, Andy must find another date and is hooked up with the very tall, Coffy Smith (Dorothy Ford). You can imagine the comedy of highs and lows that ensues. While formulamatic to its core, Love Laughs at Andy Hardy still resonates 60 years on in its representation of the pain unrequited love can wield and the lengths young men will go to regain their footing when snubbed.

My rating 8 out of 10.

Alien

Release date: 25 May 1979 (USA)

Ridley Scott directed what surely is, along with The Thing, the quintessential alien film. Starring an oh-so-young Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, one of a motley crew of deep space miners returning to earth on the Nostramo when they are woken from hypersleep to investigate a mysterious beckon on an alien planet. Course the beckon is no SOS but a warning to steer clear. But it's too late and the crew land and end up bringing back the alien incubating inside Kane (John Hurt). After its famous birth on the dinner table, the little feller systematically begins offing the crew - Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Bret (Harry Dean Stanton), the whiny Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) and Parker (Yaphet Kotto) - as Ash (Ian Holm), the company's artificial intelligence doctor plots to save it. Alien works so perfectly thanks to the atmosphere of base fear Scott creates through his handling of the film, and the fact you never really see the vicious alien bogeyman coming.

A landmark in film-making for this genre, Alien gets my rating 10 out of 10.

My Dinner with Andre

Release date: 8 October 1981 (New York Film Festival)

The great Louie Malle directed this 2 hour conversation of two New York artists eating dinner. Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, two real life New York playwrights play versions of themselves. When the wildly successful Andre returns from years in the wilderness finding himself in all sorts of experimental art projects overseas, he invites his struggling-to-make-ends-meat friend, Wallace to dinner. The result is a philosophical journey on the meaning of life as Andre shares his story of living in the moment with his more conservative and cynical friend. My Dinner with Andre takes the commonplace activity of a dinner with a friend to new heights with a dialogue which is, if nothing else, engaging. The film is an art house piece through and through and while decidedly not for everyone, this reviewer - long a fan of Joseph Campbell and existentialism philosophy - was riveted to his core.

My rating 8 out of 10.

Fool's Gold

Release date: 7 February 2008 (Australia)

Surprisingly, I preferred this silly film to Matthew McConaughey's previous film of the same genre, Sahara. Interestingly, it suffers from the same problem inherent in that film too - a frustrating lack of identity, a film unsure of what it's trying to be: comedy, adventure, historical thriller, romance. McConaughey stars as Benjamin Finnegan (Finn), a dumbass treasure seeker in hawk to a corrupt Caribbean rapper, Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart) on the hunt for the secret treasure known as the Queen's Dowry with his very smart ex-wife Tess (the always good Kate Hudson). Toss in Canada's own Donald Sutherland as a rich publisher, Nigel Honeycutt, trying to bemuse his Valley-girl-esque daughter Gemma (Alexis Dziena) and you've quite a mess of a story. Director Andy Tennant manages to keep the pace going despite the silly script mind you. While the personae McConaughery has adopted of late is thoroughly aggravating, there's enough lighthearted dumbness here to warrant a view on a cold winter's night.

My rating 5 out of 10.

Catwoman

Release date: 19 July 2004 (Los Angeles, USA)

This film is a testament to the dire need of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to have the ability to revoke an Academy Award. Case in point, Halle Berry (who 'stars' as Catwoman) and who once again proves she cannot act. She's just dreadful in this dreadful movie directed by Pitof. Catwoman is one of those stupid, dumb films that is so bad it's actually fun to watch. It's helped by great production value and cartoony CGI. Sharon Stone (as the evil Laurel Hedare) steals every frame she's in and looks fabulous and the supporting cast of Benjamin Bratt (as detective Tom Lone), an over-the-top Lambert Wilson (as the misogynous George Hedare) and Six Feet Under's Frances Conroy (as Ophelia) help temper Berry's disgraceful excuse for acting.

This is certainly no perrrrrrfect Catwoman but gets my rating of a 3 out of 10.

Walk the Line

Release date: 4 September 2005 (Telluride Film Festival)

James Mangold directs this excellent biography of country music singer, Johnny Cash, from his early years down south on a cotton farm in Arkansas to his famous concert at Fulsome Prison in 1968, which reinvented him. Joaquin Phoenix (pre-craziness) does an outstanding job as Cash while Reese Witherspoon stars as (and won an Oscar for playing) June Carter. During the two hours, we see a Johnny Cash I certainly didn't know existed: the second son of a resentful father, the two-timing husband who ignores his wife as he pursues - relentlessly - June Carter on and off the many stages they graced, and the young star who slides inevitably into the Rock Star illness of booze and drugs. While Walk the Line toes the predicable line of every biography in its delivery, it is saved thanks to the performances of Witherspoon, Phoenix and Ginnifer Goodwin (as Cash's first wife, Vivian). And damn, the music is might fine to boot.

My rating 8 out of 10.

Up

Release date: 13 May 2009 (Cannes Film Festival)

A perfectly uplifting film on every level with a thoroughly rich animation that is, in a word, stunning. Up, directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, stars Ed Asner (as voice of Carl Fredricksen), the widowed crudmudgeon who sets out - his house in tow via a collection of balloons - to honour a promise he made to his wife, and Jordan Nagai (the voice of Russell), the honest Cub Scout whose out to help him in order to earn his 'help the elderly' badge. The strength of Up is firmly rooted in its perfect story; a story as good as you're likely to see on film in some years. The fable that is released is tragic and heart-stoppingly romantic, fun and action filmed. Up sets a new America standard for animation that rivals the intricacies woven by Hayao Miyazaki and should not be missed.

My rating 10 out 10.

Sahara

Release date: 4 April 2005 (Hollywood, USA)

Based on the 1992 novel by Clive Cussler of the same name, Sahara is a movie trying to be too many things: historical treasure hunt; comedy; romance; environmental thriller. The result is a complete hash-up where everyone seems lost as to what acting role they are supposed to take: one minute Arnold Schwarzenegger; the next Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. Blame director Breck Einser and shame on Penelope Cruz (as a sort of Lara Croft-lite) and Matthew McConaughey (as a sort of Indiana Jones-lite) for not putting things right. Only William H. Macy (as the Admiral) and Lambert Wilson (as bad guy Yves Massarde) seem to have come prepared fully understanding their role. More the shame as there is great potential in the story with its undertone of American involvement in the Sahara (and civil wars) and our panache as citizens to turn a blind eye to environmental disaster in the name of financial profit that ring very true. While the action scenes are full-on fun, best to skip this whirlwind of a mess in a Saharan teapot and read the book.

My rating 4 out of 10.