The Departed (2006): review: 2/10

Men, of Irish descent and various ages, behave unspeakably in Boston. The  focus is on two new police recruits: one is commissioned to act as a mole withing a criminal organisation lead by a particularly nasty hoodlum. His bosses are no cute kittens either. In contrast, the only notable woman in the film, a police psychiatrist, is all quite nice however. It`s a pity we couldn't spend more time with her instead of those Mick brutes!

The film is very long but despite this length the characters hardly develop at all, and remain completely two-dimensional. There is a good deal of violence, using guns, fists and shoes and pieces of metal.

The film plot is not especially complex, but nonetheless it is hard to follow. The film is not elegantly paced.

The  violence is relentless and boring. Are we supposed to enjoy or endorse the violence? It`s hard to care either way.

I don't sense that Scorcese has the feel for Irish culture, that he has for Italian. There are none of the poetic aspects that can be seen in other Scorcese films which, if also violent, have considerably more artistic and emotional complexity. I don`t understand why the Rolling Stones are playing in much of the film.  The acting is not interesting. This is partly due to the uninterestingness of Wahlberg and Damon, though Nicholson`s character also lacks richness. Moreover, relations within the film are characterised by obviousness.

Love and Other Disasters (2006): review: 6.5/10

Led by a girl who works at Vogue, a crew of homosexuals and girly girls cavort in London in search of romantic bliss: Murphy wanders about prettily, sharing a flat with one of the homosexuals and dispensing advice. She has an ex-boyfriend: he is described unflatteringly: they occasionally meet for sexual congress. She likes an Argentinian photographic assistant who provides an anchor of seriousness among the trivia, flirtation and occasional humour provided by, among others, alcoholic woman- the British consider drunkeness to be essentially a comic -as opposted to pathetic- condition.

This is a slick bourgois romantic comedy which still has life despite, post crisis, feeling like a period piece: how much you like this film will depend on how much you like the environment and culture it depicts.

Grandma's Boy (2006): review: 8/10

Having lost his apartment, a 35 year old computer gaming tester moves in with his grandmother and two other enderly women: one senile, the other sexually voracious. Meanwhile, a beautiful woman comes to manage a company project in his workplace: this causes great excitement in the otherwise exclusively male, nerdy office.

The film is very funny. The meeting of the culture of elderly women and nerds is inspired, and handled with wit and warmth.

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006): review: 4/10

A road movie in which three characters wander through a Post-suicidal purgorory which is a joyless post-industrial landscape.

The film is on the edge of being very good, but there is something not quite right about it.

This is connected to the lack of depth of the acting, and a certain drowsyness to it all.The drowsyness comes from the film not exploring the central and obvious question of why they committed suicide and  from the fact that the central imaginative premise of a post-suicidal world which so utterly resembles the real world is hard to acccept.

 Tom Waits appears, but his acting is stilted and his fuction unclear., The film contains an absurdist element, but it doesn't carry forward because there is such lack of compulsion to the character's car trip.

V for Vendetta (2006): review: 4/10

In London, in the future, a dictatorship with a censored tv service and police curfews is challenged by a masked rebel: he forms a relationship with beautiful Evey whom he has rescued from the brutal police...

Though it's always a pleasure watching Portman, this film is little more than a reshuffling of dystopian cliches.

The Fall (2006): review: 4/10

"Googly! Googly! Googly!"

In a hospital in LA, an injured stuntman and a small girl entertain each other with heroic tales.

Both stuntman and girl are most beguiling, as are the fantastic shots from India, but the film is simply too long, so it's charms become lost as ideas are repeated or over-explored, rendering them wearisome.

Thus the film sadly serves to illustrate the wise artists maxim "concision is a virtue in art".

The Illusionist (2006): review - 8/10

A magician stages tricks in late Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he comes to the attention of the police.

Beautifully shot: the film seems primarily to be about totalitarianism.

Half Nelson (2006): review- 2/10; Misery porn

The film portrays the relationship between a school history teacher with a drug problem and a pupil at the black school where he works.

The self destructive teacher, who regards himself as a great philospher, is generally unlikable; his charges are not especially interesting either. There isn't much of a plot.

Moreover, everyone dresses badly and speaks a debased form of English. The teacher's apartment and lifestyle are squalid. We aren't offered any explanation for this, so it's hard to forgive.

The film is pretentious, and aims at profundity by intersplicing images of footage from the Civil Rights movement, but really it is nothing more than "misery porn".

"Misery porn" is largely a wickedness of the British, who took great delight in filming scenes of proletarian nastiness in their Kitchen Sink dramas of the 50s and 60s. More recently, Mike Leigh has attempted, dismally, to add a comic twist to these; Ken Loach has added extra "authenticity" by filming ordinary people in roles instead of trained actors.

Recently, Americans have managed to master the genre, most entertainingly in Precious (2009) in which an mountainous black girl steals chicken McNuggets and is raped by her father. She turns out to have a sepcial gift for Maths: highly reccomended.

A Prarie Home Companion (2006): review- 8/10

An elegant ensemble piece: the final night of a radio show is overseen by a private investigator Noir, and recieves a mysterous blonde visitor.

The piece contains many very funny scenes and songs, and reflections on life in Michigen, penned by Garrison Keillor.

It evenly handles a wide range of characters giving them equal weight: does this result in a film that lacks dynamism?

Jesus Camp (2006): review- 3/10

3/10

Children from Indiana are sent to a North Dakota where they are bullied by two obese women, both cropped blondes, into Christian devotion.

Footage from the camp is spliced with shots from a radio host who is attempting on his talk show to challenge the beliefs of religious right Christians, who have three main concerns: abortion, creationism, and American-ness.

Unfortunately, what the filmmakers did not consider, apparantly, is that spending an hour and a half in the company of unintelligent people is not very interesting.

Moreover, the film is plainly not an even handed survey of the Jesus Camp, but has been made with the preconception that Jesus Camp would be a bad bad place: it therefore has the ring of propoganda.

Fast Food Nation (2006): review- 4/10

Didactic but not unenjoyable film about meat production, Mexicans and student activists in Colorado.