of writing about this week, apart from vegetate in front of films and spout bad chat afterwards. And look for flats, but trust me: writing here about that would turn the RF from merely dull to so boring that you’d hunt me down just to make the torrent of asinine, self-referential tedium stop. This is assuming you’re not already trying to, I mean.
Anyway, the 5-second RF film criticism bonanza:
- The Aviator: Jesus. Three hours of my life I’ll never get back. Too much CGI (would it have been all that hard to just build one or two of the planes? Surely we’re fairly down with 60-year old technology by now?) and over-acting in abundance. There’s only so long I’m willing to sit and watch a rather obvious and clumsy portrayal of someone going slightly mad with OCD.
- Sideways: genius. Like a middle-aged Swingers with wine. Excellent film, from start to finish. Low and high brow humour, acting so good it’s almost imperceptible and a realism that I haven’t seen for ages. Also, Paul Giamatti’s performance, unlike Leonardo di Caprio’s in The Aviator, is eminently Oscar-worthy.
- JFK: come on, you’ve seen this. Three hours actually worth watching, and apart from Costner getting all teary-eyed at the end, well-enough acted. It was almost good enough to make me drop everything and begin a one-man odyssey to bring the real Kennedy killers to justice. Almost. I think I made a cup of tea instead.
- Team America: World Police: also genius, in a jokes-about-cocks way. Takes the piss out of everyone. Puerile nihilism with puppets. And if that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.
That is all.
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Hmmm… Team America. Yeah, puerile. Genius, perhaps, for those who happen to condone Bush-style hawkism. Underlying the humour (which is based in little outside the expletive/sensational, whereas most good jokes have some positive angle) there’s an attack on anyone who would try anything progressive; a right-wing pessimism, very useful in maintaining the status quo (or engendering something even worse) although hopefully rendered less effective by the ending (where the writers forget their nihilism and unironically present the film’s neo-conservatism). The puppets are funny. 5/5 for farcical deaths etc. But the message sucks.
True, the film does mock those that try to do something progressive (the actors, in this case), but I saw it as an attack on the pious, self-aggrandising nature of celebrity (ever see Phil Collins declare “I’m talking nonce-sense” on Brass Eye?) taken to such ridiculous lengths so as to fulfil the film’s comic ends.
Also, the ending: could a film that mocks absolutely everyone who takes a view on the “War on Terror”, pro- or anti-, possibly have had a sensible ending? We’re talking about a film that wears its amorality on its sleeve, not one that’s actually trying to pass judgement on anything at all.
I fully expect to have this view taken apart with razor-sharp logical scissors, but hey: I enjoyed the film and took nothing away from it apart from a lingering chuckle about a puppet barfing himself into unconsciousness. I imagine most other people intelligent enough to find it funny in the first place did exactly the same.
(In other, probably unrelated news, Matt Stone has said he never wants to work with puppets – or indeed his South Park/Team America chum Trey Parker again.)