Gwyneth Paltrow Top Ten

 1) Shakespeare in Love (1998) - still a good movie

2) Seven (1995) - very sweet in a movie that needed sweetness

3) The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - really solid

4) Sliding Doors (1998) - a film about a girl who gets a haircut but very good 

5) Bounce (2000) - a forgotten film but she's very good

6) Glee (2010-11) - her stint on this was funny

7)  The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) - peak decent Miramax

8) Emma (1998) - not as good as Alicia Silvertone but likeable

9) Iron Man (2008) - not much of a role but one of these films should be on this list

10) Shallow Hal (2001) - I liked her in this, honest! 

Book review - "The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts" by Billy Bob Thornton and Kinky Friedman

 Entertaining memoir from Thornton told in the form of conversations and chats from friends such as Robert Duvall. Angelina Jolie wrote the intro. Doesn't talk much about his early marriages. The stories of growing up are vivid as are those of him being a young man in Arkansas then trying to break in Hollywood. Generous and spiritual. The last third is full of a lot of rants about how the world is going to hell and the internet is horrible - turns into middle aged white man ranting. Always interesting though as we don't often get an insight into Thornton's mind.

Written when Ang was with Brad and Thornton endorses them. Goes up until Jayne Mansfield's Car. Talks a lot about music.

Movie review - "If" (2024) ** (warning spoilers)

 A bright idea - imaginary friends need a home - and some lovely moments (a dance to 'Better Be Good to Me', reuniting imaginary friends with adults) but it doesn't quite work. The rules of the world feel so arbitrary (sometimes you can see "if"s, sometimes you can't; what triggers recognition?), it's needlessly confusing (what is John Krasinsky in hospital for, why not spell out things - I read on wikipedia he was in for heart surgery but it's not clear in the film where it always looks like he's just visiting).

They may as well have said up front that Ryan Reynolds was the girl's "if" - sure it's a nice reveal but not knowing it just feels weird why he was helping this girl. Some irritating things like Krasinski and Reynolds look alike, and the flashbacks to home movies, we often see the three of them, who is holding the camera?

The lead girl gives a professional performance -there was something "I've been acting since I was two" about it. That's unfair I know it's how I felt.

I think Krasinsky needed a co writer on this. A Quiet Place worked because writers had given him a great script.

Book review - "Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood" by Edward Zwick

 Entertaining book. Some good goss - Matthew Broderick being a pain on Glory (his mother whinged about the script), developing Legends of the Fall, Julia Roberts being a pain in Shakespeare in Love, advising Sydney Pollack against Julia Ormond on Sabrina.

Skips past his 21st century career very quickly - I would've liked more on say Pawn Sacrifice. His relationship with Pollack is particularly interesting. Like a lot of genuine liberals he can't seem to spot his own blind spots (eg unable to understand why Muslims might be upset with The Siege - it's because there are no heroic Muslims, Ed). Also while he like many in Hollywood is keen to push his own log cabin narrative, shortly after arriving he was besties with major players and at 27 was story editor on Family.

Look, I'm being mean, he's obviously talented and has had a terrific career and made lots of interesting films and TV.

Movie review - "Babylon" (2022) ***

 Not hard in a way to see why it wasn't a hit - it's long, there's no real access point character (the lead, Diego Calva, should be this but he never seems to genuinely love Margot Robbie), there's things you could cut out, it is indulgent, things like elephant poo and Phoebe Tonkin peeing on a guy won't go down well...

But it is a valentine to cinema, Jean Smart's lovely speech to Pitt, very well acted, gorgeous to look at, lovely montage at the end, fantastic turns from Spike Jonze as the Curtiz like director, the first AD, the Dorothy Arzner type, the thumping music score.

Sometimes you feel a co writer would've helped - why make Li Jun Li a cabaret artist and title writer? - but it is definitely bold and interesting.

Movie review - "The Lost City" (2022) **

 I love the concept and the stars and the support cast, was in the mood for a Romancing the Stone throwback but the film didn't quite seem tow woek. Do cover models really go on tour with authors? It feels like there were studio notes to introduce everyone early - Dan Radcliffe, Channing Tatum, Brad Pitt. So there's no time to get to know characters.

Sandra Bullock, an all time great star, has no character to play - what's her angle? Bitter? Romantic? Tired of love? Warm? Her plastic surgery is annoying and she has nil chemistry with Tatum who also has no character to play. A bit snaggy, bit dumb... Why not just make it simple - have her sick of love, cynical about it, have him as a romantic. Or something else. Pick a lane!

Radcliffe is fine. The film lacks a Danny de Vito. People try. Underwhelming action sequences too much CGI. No life, no energy. Some pretty scenery and clever treasure twists. But it misses.

Random thoughts on the film Moneyball

It’s a film with a great DNA that they ignore so it can be a star vehicle for Brad Pitt.

My take...

“Moneyball” is about beating the system. Watching a sport and going “hang on, they’re not picking the team right... I need to pick the team”.

That’s every sports fan’s fantasy. Well, apart from playing. If we can’t play... to be able to pick the side, and pick it better than the pros.

It’s the core DNA of the film/book.

Someone ignored, who is a joke, no good at sports, but who loves the game... sees what other people can’t see. And is proved right.

The film should be about Jonah Hill’s character. Tubby, nerdy, treated with disdain. But... he knows the Secret. He installs a system... picks players who others think are no good. And... creates a winning team.

Ta-da.

But...

Brad Pitt wants to make it.

Great. Brad Pitt is a big star. People will go see his movies. Jonah Hill not so much. (At least not at the budget).

But there’s only one role Brad Pitt can really play... Billy Beane.

Good looking. Charismatic. The boss. I mean, he never made it as a top player but... he’s brad Pitt. God did not hate him.

So they had to make the film about Billy Beane trying to find a new way... it touches on his unfulfilled playing career but it’s a little convoluted.

I think they made a good film on this.

But it's not the film they should've made.

That should've been about Jonah Hill's character.

Book review - "Legends of the Fall" by Jim Harrison

 Lots of plot shoved in. Covers a lot of years. The character of Tristan must've been catnip to actors - swashbuckling, hot tempered, violent, vagabond, sexy (also really highly abusive). Female characters are rough sketches. A decent read. I didn't mind the film version though no one seems to talk much about it now.

Movie review - "Moneyball" (2011) ***1/2 (re-watching)

 This is like an indie cover version of what should be a pop song. It kind of misses the drama/fan of the central concept - you get to figure out how to beat the system, you use stats instead of gut feel and talent worship, players get a chance again.

Yet it does work on its own level with languid takes, dark photography, long scenes, all that stuff.

Movie review - "The King" (2019) **1/2

Adapted from the Prince Hal cycle of plays by Shakespeare though Game of Thrones feels like more of an influence - the dialogue, the look of the movie, the battle sequences, all the gloom and violence.

It revamps the plays which is fine but I don't think what they replaced it with is more interesting than what they cut out. Hal starts off a  bit irresponsible but 20 minutes in he's killed Hotspur in hand to hand combat so basically he's a bad ass. Falstaff is a bad ass too - no coward.

No one feels like a real human being everyone feels like they're acting in a movie - or, more accurately, Game of Thrones. People talk tough. There's bursts of violence to keep you awake. 

It looks stunning - costumes, production design. The actors are all fine. I like how the characters switched from English to French and back. Lots of good stuff. But I felt it didn't have much underpinning it. Everyone was too tough.

Movie review - "Ad Astra" (2019) ***

You can see why James Gray is admired but also why people don't go to his movies - lots of good stuff and bad stuff in here mixed together. It's a riff on Apocalypse Now only in space which I think is a great idea.

Gray does a half good job of setting up the world - there's not a lot of Indians and Chinese in space in the near future and I'm not trying to be overly woke here it just doesn't strike me as realistic. Sometimes the sets and stuff felt real other times it felt like clunky throwbacks (will we still have CNN? and scrolls across the screen).

Gray isn't that good at exposition - like making the power surge a threat, and I got confused at the end what was going on. He's very good on theme - the importance of connecting and realising we're all we've got. It felt like there was too much narration and dialogue.

He's very good on suspense/action sequences - the opening fall, the chase scene on the moon, the space monkeys.  Indeed these sequences could have been spun off into their own movies that probably would have been more fun, especially Brad Pitt vs the space pirates or Brad Pitt vs the space monkeys.

Pretty much everyone who gets a ride with Brad Pitt in this film dies. Pitt is excellent, incidentally. Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones playing former astronaut colleagues is a nice nod to Space Cowboys.

It's a big budget star driven movie that's not a sequel and is based on an original script. It has a superb star performance and some effective moments.

Movie review - "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Random thoughts
- Nicholas Hammond of all people knocks it out of the park
- Bruce Dern was fine but that would have been the perfect last role for Burt Reynolds
- like a lot of film buffs I was sitting there going "I love a lot of this but I get the Fabian and Michael Rennie references, I'm weird, what about normal people?"
- the film was about fetishness - movie posters, TV guide, cigarette packets, logos
- the money is well spent - it's a film about movie stars, production design and Tarantino - without those things it would be a hard slog (for some people it will be)
- I get the ending and I liked it
- the final assault ramming head repeatedly thing... that wasn't cool... wasn't cathartic in the way that say killing Nazis in Inglorious Basterds was or slave owners in Django Unchained was or rapist men in Kill Bill was... the women were killers but marginalised members of society... also we just meet them in the film.
- all the acting is excellent
- I wonder if the 8 year old girl on the set of Lancer is some allusion to James Stacy's pedophilia, not accessed in the film
- there is no female role with shade and dimension - Tate dances and is ethereal, the Charlie girls are sex objects/psychos/"other", Ric's Italian wife jabbers and gesticulates even though she takes part in a crucial scene, Brad Pitt's wife is a nagging bitch... in contrast the male roles are given lots of depth... Brad and Leo of course but also Emile Hirsch's pining Jay Sebring, Bruce Dern's George Spahn
- the visit to the Spahn Ranch was v creepy
- Mike Moh is a great Bruce Lee

Movie review - "The Lost City of Z" (2017) ***

I get the feeling all during pre production of this people kept going "Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence of Arabia that's what'll be like" and in many ways this is a throwback to that film - it's long, about British Empire derring-do, is an adventure tale. It's beautifully shot and gorgeous to look at.

It's a bit dull though. I wanted to like it more than I did - I enjoy history tales and adventure movies. The cast are fine- Charlie Hunnam struggles with his period English accent acting, as does Sienna Miller, but he's a believable explorer, and Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Angus Macfadyen were all very good.

It lacked excitement and flair. Hunnam/Fawcett explores politely and respectfully. He has a respectful relationship with his wife (Miller); she occasionally wishes he were home more but doesn't make too big a thing out of it. His son (Holland) sulks a bit but that's soon resolved. Mutinous Macfadyen is a very polite pain. The trench warfare in World War One and the Indian attacks seemed polite - spitting out darts from the riverbank while the explorers are on a raft. Even Fawcett's final death is polite - they are drugged by Indians and carried off over the people... we don't see what happened to them, even if they died.

It was full of scenes that you wondered why were in it - such the opening sequence of hunting, and the ball. Was that to establish the family had a poor reputation? Why not cut in later and dramatise it some other way?

It does have a cohesive vision though, I'll give it that. And while the heart never got thumping watching it, there were memorable moments - I still think of Macfadyen's polite protest and the death scene. Maybe they should've focused on the final expedition instead of three - I don't know. I can see why critics liked it and audiences weren't enthusiastic though.

Movie review - "War Machine" (2017) **1/2

Patchily impressive account of the war in Afghanistan with Brad Pitt. There's a lot of narration - I mean a lot of narration that mostly describes stuff that could and maybe should have been dramatised. It also describes things that we go on to see without enriching it somehow.

I wanted this to be better than it was because I'd love a smart look at American strategy in Afghanistan and the modern day military. And occasionally this is first rate - Anthony Michael Hall is superb as a bug eyed officer; there's an unexpectedly touching depiction of the marriage between Pitt and his wife, played by Meg you-haven't-seen-me-in-ages Tilly; it actually takes a critical look at Obama's foreign policy without being a moronic Fox News take; raises some interesting issues (could it have worked defending a smaller perimeter?).

But it never quite digs in beneath the surface. Brad Pitt acts his heart out, puts on the voice, does the jog - but it's still Brad in a funny wig. We never really understand why his character does what he does - or the others. I kept expecting Topher Grace and Hall in particular to do something spectacular but they never do.

The film felt like it was made by a smart uni student - someone who'd read a couple of books on the subject, but who didn't really understand war or the men who wage it. For instance, the journalist (who I feel the film seems to empathise with more than anyone else, even though he doesn't appear until well into the running time and doesn't do much except hang around and pass judgement via voice over), confidentially asserts that counter insurgency never works, overlooking the Indonesians in West Irian Jaya, the British in Oman and Malaysia and Borneo, the Chinese in Tibet etc. There's no great insight on the Allies or the locals either.

There's a great movie in here struggling to get out. Maybe if Michod had a co writer.

Movie review - "The Big Short" (2015) ****

Hollywood takes on the GFC - so the protagonists are people who made a pile of money out of it, by betting against the market. It's an irony the characters often comment on - the fact the heroes triumph mean that the world's economy crashed. But it is a fresher way of looking at the disaster.

There are three main groups - Steve Carrell and his gang, loosely associated with Ryan Gosling; Christian Bale and his gang; two guys and Brad Pitt. The villains are the bankers and inefficient government.

There's a lot of exposition - so much so you wonder if it couldn't have been dramatised better. I think the filmmakers fell in love with the conceit of having celebrities explain things when surely they could have been demonstrated via action. It's criticisms about the treatment of immigrants and poor people might have had more impact in a film that didn't fail the Bechdel test so badly (most female characters are strippers, and/or celebrities).

But it is a smart film and it treats its audience smartly. Bale and Carrell engage in a lot of Acting but after a while I got used to it, and the social anger and comment is insightful and pointed. Often very funny and also anger making, and further serves to highlight Adam Mackay as the leading political satirist of his generation.

Movie review - "Fury" (2014) *** (warning: spoilers)

It may be unfair but I can't shake this image of David Ayer getting jobs in Hollywood by strutting around going "I've seen things in my life I don't like to talk about" with this mysterious air. So he's been given a plumb writing-directing gig of a big budget war film about a American tank crew in the last days of the campaign in Germany.

That's a solid idea for a movie - tank crews don't often get featured in films, so it has freshness, and you get to focus on a couple of characters as opposed to losing track of who is in a platoon.

There is a strong cast - Brad Pitt and Michael Pena can always be relied on, Shia le Bouf gives off a 1940s vibe (he's having a great second career as a character actor), John Bernthal does a variation on his Walking Dead performance but that's fine and Logan Lerman is effective in that old standby, the newbie to the unit. Aussie Xavier Samuel pops up as does Scott Eastwood.

Some of this is fantastic - a big set piece tank battle which shows how tanks worked during the war, an interlude where Pitt takes Lerman to stay with some German girls and its conveyed that he's doing it to get a respite from his men, the last moments of the men. It looks marvellous with all that mud and metal and blood. There are some lovely touches showing Pitt's PTSD (his hands shake a lot of the time, his eyes are haunted).

But other times it's silly and not true to its vision - it sets itself up as this darker depiction of war, with the Americans shooting Germans who surrender, and newbies having to scrape brains out of the tank - but can't resist a finale where Pitt insists they stay and take on a division of SS and almost succeed in wiping them all out. I mean, that's out of Bataan (1943). There are also too many lines which smack of wisdom and feel all writer-y ("this is war").

And the movie tries to have it's cake and eat it too by having Pitt be this psycho - he forces Lerman to shoot a surrendered soldier in the back, he basically allows Lerman to coerce a German girl into sex - but also a super hero, who is super wise, smart and brave and whose men adore him. (The argument in with these sort of characters is that "oh we're trying to depict a complex man we're not endorsing all his actions" but he's played by Brad Pitt, they give him super heroic achievements... it's annoying.)

Movie review - "World War Z" (2013) ***1/2

How much longer is this zombie boom going to last? Now Brad Pitt has gotten in on the act with a $250 million or whatever it cost epic... and it's actually pretty good. This is really a series of set pieces - the initial attack (fantastic spectacle), a shoot out in Korea, a siege in Jerusalem, through hospital corridors in Cardiff.

There's not a lot of character development but there are some fine actors, pleasing pro-UN propaganda, and refreshing multi-national/racial look at the problem instead of making it all about America. Mireille Enos actually makes the thankless role of Brad Pitt's wife into something memorable and Daniella Kertesz is a find as the tough Israeli soldier.

Interesting how in the film's troubled shooting, they originally ended with a massive battle but then went smaller, and went to character - just like what happened with Kaufman and Hart and their play Once in a Lifetime. When in doubt, go to character.

Movie review - "Killing Them Softly" (2012) ***

A simple, effective story given the hey-let's-get-this-into-Cannes treatment - which results in some wonderful scenes and moments but it doesn't quite work as a piece. Brad Pitt deserves kudos for getting this made, and he's very good in what is, at bottom, a superhero role - a killer who is smarter and tougher and more principled (in his way) than anyone else in the film. 

Support turns are great too - Ben Mendhelson's Aussie accent was a bit jarring (you don't expect to find Aussies in that sort of environment) but he was terrific as was Scoot McAir. Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta and James Gandolfini were strong too although Gandolfini's two monologues felt repetitive and also a bit too much this-is-a-long-scene-to-attract-Gandolfini-to-the-role.

The stuff about the GFC and the 2008 elections felt like it was gilding the lily too much (my head hurt afterwards from having subtext bashed on me) as did Pitt's final speech about Thomas Jefferson. Memorable set pieces such as the heroin sequence, the dogs and the opening credits, some good action.

Movie review - "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (2008) **1/2

Far more Forrest Gump than F Scott Fitzgerald - which maybe explains why it was a hit when so many cinema versions of Fitzgerald flop. Like Gump (the films share the same writer) here is a tale that goes on for ever, covers generations, hits on key pop culture moments ("the day that will live in infamy", ushering in the sixties listening to Twist and Shout), is set in the South, has a hero who works for a period of time working on a boat, fights in a war in which his friend dies (even if in this one he isn't a soldier), has a long running romance with a girl he ultimately can't be with because of factors beyond his control (in this case his reverse ageing process rather than intelligence) yet they still conceive a child together, he makes lots of money, gets along well with blacks (who are family figures for him), demonstrates incredible special effects (in this case ones for ageing instead of missing limbs), wise mother, folksy narration, etc etc. It's got Gump's flaws in it's lead characters - neither

Like Gump it's also reassuring - you experience the fantasy about getting younger but ultimately realise that it's better to age normally. And some of it is very good - the effects are stunning and the image of Cate Blanchett nursing a baby, senile Benjamin really hits home.

Movie review – “Moneyball” (2011) ***1/2

Some divine casting - the faces of the scouts look so real - and wonderful detail but so much of the excitement is sucked out of the script, scenes are dragged on too long, it skips over the real heart of it (giving players no longer regarded as top rate a second chance). The story is interesting, it makes you think and play fantasy team additions in your head while watching. There were a bunch of versions of the script - I read an Aaron Sorkin draft which included a wife for Brad Pitt's character and a lot more life and energy.