Film Shapes

The second of my two trips to the cinema while I was back in Aus, this time I enjoyed the surprisingly tranquil surrounds of the Bunbury Grand Cinema. The film was Quentin Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained and I had a pretty good time while watching. It was only a few days later that a few reservations began to leak out. Now, I quite like Tarantino as a film-maker. He's smart and he knows his film history. Pulp Fiction was one of the movies that defined the 1990s and Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown are brilliant. I didn't like Kill Bill (1 or 2) and I've yet to see Death Proof but Inglourious Basterds was great fun. So that basically leaves us with Django . And (of Tarantino's work) I reckon it's just above the Kill Bill films in quality. Well, maybe quality is the wrong word - more like.....heart or emotion. As with much of his portfolio, Django comes across as a cocky, smirking movie, one that's a little too clever for its own good. I get...

One of my two trips to the cinema while back in Australia, I saw this at Cinema Paradiso in Northbridge (where once upon a time I used to get the odd free entry courtesy of the Pig Strangler). It seems to have retained its indie charm though not its old price listings - $17 for a ticket and $4.50 for a choc bomb! Welcome to Perth. Argo is Benna Fleck's 3rd directorial effort and he seems to be growing into a pretty solid film-maker. He must have done his research regarding pacing (helps to have a good editor) and atmosphere. I've never really been a fan of his acting or presence on screen but he obviously knows how to get a performance from actors. In fact, I think he's a better actor when he's directing himself (or maybe he's just getting older and more familiar). The cast is fine all round, especially the relatively less well-known group on the periphery of the crisis. Their performances lend a pseudo-documentary feel to the whole thing, especially in counte...