Category Archive: Drama Film
Duel
Goliath & David: Peterbilt 281 tanker vs Valiant Plymouth
(Dir. Steven Spielberg) (1971) TVC’s all-time favourite trucking movie. Even with the padding of additional scenes to lengthen the story for theatrical release after its debut on U.S. television, it is still a masterwork of ruthless economy in its staging, editing and plot. Dennis Weaver is the perfect Mr. Average who plays a little chicken with a foul, evil-looking old rig, and gets a hell of a lot more than he bargained for. Everything hangs together – everything is plausible – the tension is built up seamlessly and then, “there you are: right back in the jungle again.” Spielberg is…
Continue Reading →Boyhood
Mozart didn't goof off in the darkroom
(Dir. Richard Linklater) (2014) Why all the fuss? The only evidence of twelve years of production is the aging of the characters. A tired story line – a feckless, unthinking mother, no father. Boy falls in love with girl next door. As Dopey Mum says, “I just thought there would be more.”
Continue Reading →Interstellar
"MATT DAMON!!"
(Dir. Christopher Nolan) (2014) It is shocking how Hollywood, where marriage equality is all the rage, seems unable to avoid schmaltzy deployment of The Nuclear Family as its trope for love and sacrifice. In the visually impressive Interstellar, a former NASA ace stumbles, through the dust of his corn fields, onto a super-secret (off balance sheet) NASA base, where the head guy only needs to finish that knotty maths equation (or make up something in its place) in order to save the world from a kind of agricultural Ebola, doubtless the product of pulping that mountain of IPCC reports and…
Continue Reading →Jimi – All is by My Side
Are you experienced?
Have you been experienced recently?
(Dir. John Ridley) (2013) TVC is assured by B, a colleague with impeccable sources, that this film is not overly prone to truth, particularly in its styling of Hendrix as a violently jealous thug. Without having any personal knowledge, we must say that his persona, as we recall it, does strike one as being more akin to, say, Sam Cooke than, say, Big Lurch. Whatever, our main fault with this film effort is that it is silly, and rather dull. Whilst watching, TVC extemporized a new set of lyrics to be sung to “Hey Joe”: Hey Jim, They made a movie of…
Continue Reading →Perfect Murder Perfect Town
Jon Benét Ramsey's grave at Saint James Episcopal (by Taurusrus)
(2000) (Dir. Lawrence Schiller) Directed by Schiller as a tele-movie, originally a series, from his own book about the murder of 6 year old glamour-puss Jon Benét Ramsey on Christmas Day (or Boxing Day) 1996 in Boulder, Colorado, it violently divided critics and viewers alike as either partisan, too procedural or just plain icky. Young Jon Benét was found strangled in the family’s cellar after what was called “the ‘War and Peace’ of ransom notes” turned up. The parents became prime suspects; police and prosecutors clashed over the making of a prima facie case, and no one was ever charged….
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