Powder Film Review - Teenage Electric Daydreams

Powder (1995)

We’ve all been there at some point. No matter how hard you try, you don’t fit in. You don’t know why. There’s something that you can’t put your finger on between you and ‘them’. Whether the ‘them’ are your parents, your friends, the people you went to school with, the streets where you live. You feel different, almost like you’re a different species to those around you, and you wish you didn’t. There is nothing you wouldn’t give to fit in like the rest of them. To not feel on edge, to look at people and see something that resembles what you are like in them. To be normal. The kicker is that it feels more acute when you’re young. 

On paper, Powder [DVD] initially appears to be a straightforward coming of age drama. A reclusive young man is pulled out into the world and thrust into the small town spotlight. There are a small few who recognise him for what he is, something special. To the majority he’s the weirdo.

The Weekend Watch Film - Spartan

David, David, David fracking Mamet. I used to love Mamet, really love Mamet, but David and I have fallen out in recent times. Not because of his change in politics, and his sweeping generalisations about people with non-conservative views. Each to their own. A human being can change it's opinion on the world can't it? No crime there. The reason that Me & Mamet haven't been on speaking terms for a little while is the sheer lack of...oomph in his work recently. Where's the life gone? This is a man who wrote 'Three Uses of the Knife', a book about drama that has more passion in it than most drama scripts, but someone who seems to have gone off the boil and turned his back on the power of his best work. Thing is, I can't quite let him go. So this weekend we're watching Spartan (2004) with the hope the some of the Mamet vitality will return. There's a great looking cast with Val Kilmer, Derek Luke and William H. Macy and it's written and directed by Mamet after all, so it could, it could be good...

If you fancy braving it with us, then take a look at Spartan and let us know what you think. Do you still have faith?

Please be good.

The Short Short Film Review - Forgive

Forgive (2008)

Families, they're supposed to be the rock upon which we stand, but sometimes it can feel like quicksand.

Even when we become adults our parents can still feel like giants. Like there's a part of the brain that still sees them through the eyes of the five year old that you once were. You may see their frailties, you may be taller, faster and stronger now, but they still have the ability to tower over you.

The Weekend Watch Film - Valhalla Rising

Earlier this month we reviewed Drive, but before that movie and Only God Forgives, Valhalla Rising was Nicolas Winding Rfen's second English language movie after Bronson. It's also the film with the most misleading movie poster/DVD cover in many a year, as the marketing department tries to tap into the hyper-realised, historical ultra-violence market created by 300. This might explain why the film tends to have an adore-it or detest-it response. When you're turning up expecting to see hordes of vikings scrapping it out, and what you find is an hallucinatory, landscape filled journey into Norse myth with beyond minimalist dialogue, you might think you've been short changed. Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt and Casino Royale) plays mute warrior One-Eye in Valhalla Rising [DVD], a film which may (if you let it) take you into a stark dream from a thousand years ago.

The Weekend Watch Film - Five Easy Pieces

Every Friday we'll post a film that we're going to watch over the weekend.


To kick us off we're starting with Five Easy Pieces from 1970. Oil rigger Jack Nicholson spends his time drinking, bowling and sleeping around, having dropped out of American high-society.

It's a film that seems to get over-shadowed by Nicholson's turns in Easy Rider and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, so we figured it was time to go back and see how it stands up.