After Grog Blog

GHOST II

Lived his life for the moment

Patrick Swayze has died after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

What is your favourite Swayze fillum?

• Roadhouse
• Point Break

WRONGKA!

DON'T ARKS ME

Anyone know this Aussie fillum?

I remember when I was a young fella, me and my older brother watched this Aussie movie one night and we laughed so much It was brilliant. It was about a builder and his 2 sons worked for him and they were fairly dodgy. The main actor is now currently to be seen in that Yellow Pages ad where the dog gets attacked by the bees. Any ideas?

NO CIGAR FOR BERT

Had a bit of a chuckle at this exchange between Bert Deeling (Deling?) and Bob Ellis during Monday's Conversation Hour. They were discussing Bert's 1975 film Pure Shit.

BD: "Peter Weir at the same time made a film for Film Australia, whatever, called No Roses for Michael."

BE: "No he didn't."

BD: "Yes he did."

BE: "Chris McGill made No Roses for Michael."

BD: "No Roses for Michael, on the other hand, is the sort of thing we were talking about."

By the way. Jon Faine better watch his back, or have his knives at the ready, because Waleed Aly is looming.

DO YA FEEL SILLY, PUNK?

How famous?

"In which 1971 film did Clint Eastwood, playing the character Harry Callahan, speak the famous line: 'Go ahead, make my day'?"

~~ Question 1 in today's Herald Sun quiz.

You gots to know.

"Go ahead, make my day" is from Sudden Impact (1983), not Dirty Harry (1971).

ONE SKIPPED OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Not to mention Chinatown, The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, chuck in The Shooting, Ride in the Whirlwind ("Why don't ya put a tune to it, Vern?") and The King of Christian Slater.

Foxtel previews The Shining:

"Adapted from the Stephen King horror novel of the same name. For the film that made Jack Nicholson's career, Director Stanley Kubrick shot around 400 km of film."

Interested, also, in the 400 km part. Anyone know how much film was shot?

THE BIG RED REPPLE DEPPLE

Foxtel reviews the Sam Fuller 1980 war film, The Big Red One:

Follows the exploits of an American Inventory sergeant and the members of his unit as they try to survive the horrific conditions and circumstances of World War II.

To be fair to Foxtel, they sort of got it right given the methodical way rookies came an went in Marvin's platoon. "You are?" "John Q. Rookie from Poughkeepsie." Boom. "Next!"

OSCARS UNDEAD!

Tonight for one night only! Liveblogging the Oscars here live on this blog! Tonight! In colour! With THX!

Commentary starts around 9pm.

Warning: Adult themes, occasional coarse language, medium level violence, low level drug use. AGB recommends parental guidance.

TAKE YOUR HAT OFF

Yesterday in the Herald Sun there was a face staring out at me from among the pictures of casualties.

"I know that bloke!"

Veteran actor Reg Evans and partner feared dead

VETERAN actor Reg Evans and his partner are believed to have died while trying to defend their small farm at St Andrews from the fire that destroyed their land.

My mind meanders back to 1980 and the Karratha drive-in. There, with Neil Darbyshire and Kevin McGinty, I watched The Island, a reputed howler in which Michael Caine stumbles on an undiscovered tribe of pirates of the Caribbean, one of who is Jack the Bat as played by Reg Evans. A farcical fillum according to many, but entirely plausible and entertaining as far as I am concerned.

But, while Reg in The Island has stuck in my nadger these last 29 years, he will forever be famous for another monumental scene:

Bubba Zanetti: We're here to meet a friend. Comin' on the train.
Station Master: Nothin' comin' on the train except a couple of crates and a, uh, coffin!
Bubba Zanetti: Our friend.
Station Master: That must be your friend over there. They didn't leave much of him.
Bubba Zanetti: Must've cut his heart out, eh?
Station Master: Yes. That's what I meant. Poor bastard!
Toecutter: [whirls on the Station Manager] The Nightrider. That is his name... the Nightrider.
Station Master: [frightened] The NightRider.
Toecutter: Remember him when you look at the night sky!
Station Master: I will.
Toecutter: Take your hat off.
Station Master: Anything you say.
Toecutter: Anything I say. What a wonderful philosophy you have. Take him away.

Reg doesn't get a name, he's just "station master". But there would barely be an Aussie fillum fan who can't recite that exchange, almost verbatim.

HERE HOUSE HERE

Want a tree-change?

For sale: the finest cottage known to humanity

Sleddale Hall, near Shap in Cumbria, featured in the film Withnail & I and is now on the market for £145,000. But how might Withnail set out its particulars?

AUSTRALIA, YOU'RE SPRUIKING IT

Claire Sutherland of the Herald Sun, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is not a review, it's an advertisement:

Australia, you little beauty!

HE SET himself an enormous challenge, but Baz Luhrmann has pulled off an incredible film in Australia.

The film begins with surprising slapstick and trademark Luhrmann over-the-top humour - a scene featuring Jackman giving himself a bath with a bucket is pure beefcake and proud of it - but settles into a compelling and moving tale that traverses war, race relations, class and the Stolen Generation.

It's a movie with a message, but Luhrmann provides the audience with no shortage of thrills, from a cliffhanger cattle stampede to the bombing of Darwin.

Kidman and Jackman are perfect together, Jackman's broad speaking drover a perfect foil to Kidman's snooty English rose.

Australia features some of the most beautiful photography ever seen in an Australian film, from the Bungle Bungles in the Kimberley to the Northern Territory in the midst of the wet season.

A love letter to the Australian landscape and our history, Australia has international blockbuster written all over it.

And in case you were wondering: yes, it's produced by Twentieth Century-Fox.

WHAT WE GOT HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMEMORATE

Who said newsreaders were thick?

Ernie Sigley: "What was your favourite Paul Newman film?"

David Armstrong: "Bullitt."

That will be news to car chase affycondos everywhere. There followed some chat about why it didn't matter that Armstrong was wrong. No point admitting that the 3AW newsy probably had no idea about Newman's films and was either one) guessing, or two) making it up... or three) both. Newsreaders should steer well clear of that folksy fakesy media banter.

WHO BREAKS A BUTTERFLY ON A LIST?

The Times has gone list-crazy, but at least they know it:

Take your seats for the top 100 films

Another film list? The same old Citizen Kane? No — this one’s different, says The Times’s chief film critic James Christopher.

You may be suffering from list exhaustion. There are so many about, and especially on film. But this one is different. Yes, of course we’d say that. But having read endless Top 100 film lists, we felt short-changed. Sure, they’re definitive in their way, but they don’t have many surprises. This one aims to be all-encompassing, certainly, and authoritative. But it is also intended to cause debate and maybe consternation.

None of us — myself, my fellow critics at The Times and my editor Tim Teeman — realised how contentious this list would be to compile. We didn’t want simply to rearrange the furniture as other lists do. Nor to kow-tow to monolithic critical masterpieces routinely crowned year on year.

There are some spectacular casualties. Citizen Kane (1941) failed to cut the mustard. The genius of Orson Welles was not to be denied. But it was felt that his sour and seedy thriller Touch of Evil (1958) was not only equally audacious in terms of pure film-making, but also had greater resonance than Kane.

Some omissions are too painful to talk about: Groundhog Day, The Servant, The Lives of Others, Psycho, The English Patient. (All my choices naturally.) Tastes vary dramatically, and you would be amazed how few critics will fall on their swords when it comes to such a fraught subject. That said, the list looks far fresher and younger than any of us dared hope. The number of recent releases vying for places near the summit is a surprise. I shall be horrified if anyone agrees with every one of our choices. The point of The Times Top 100 Films of All Time is to stimulate argument, and sharpen your own thoughts about the ingredients that make great movies.

Christopher says the list "aims to be all-encompassing, certainly, and authoritative" but while individual Times critics reviewed the individual films, I can't find where it says how they all-encompassingly and authoritatively selected the list. I assume they injected a modicum of thought into the selection process, but Christopher seems to be tip-toeing around the "f" word: favourites.

100 - 91: From dinosaurs to life in a Florida work camp.

90 - 81: Moral corruption from Orson Welles and a wildcard performance by Al Pacino.

80 - 71: Banjos, babies, bodices and bad boys. Plus the first and best of the "spoof" movies.

70 - 61: Racial tension, sexual tension, paranoia and conflicting points of view.

60 - 51: Film plots with a twist - men who live as women and life in a fake alternative reality.

50 - 41: Brilliance from Brando and an ether-inhaling performance from Hopper.

40 - 31Which 70's film won all five, major Oscars? What was so special about Tommy Johnson's Tuba?

30 - 21: Four brothers, a bunch of Gangsters, a school outing that goes wrong and a naughty heiress.

20 - 11: Jungle warfare, jungle capers, red shoes and a shiny red mac.

10 - 4: Hitchcock's finest feature, Gloria Swanson's revival and some classic performances by Jack Nicholson.

3 - ET: The Extra Terrestrial: It happened, according to movie lore, at the first Cannes Film Festival screening of E.T.

2 - There Will Be Blood: Few films in recent years have made such an instant and dramatic impact as this.

1 - Casablanca: Of all the films in all the cinemas in all the world . . . why this?

Christopher concludes that "The point of The Times Top 100 Films of All Time is to stimulate argument, and sharpen your own thoughts about the ingredients that make great movies." Fair enough; it probably does that. It certainly stimulates argument; or what passes for argument on a "your films are crap / my films are better" level. But - and this will seem like Confessions of a Fathead - the more I think about films, about what ingredients make them great, the more confused I get, and the less I seem to like them.

Note: these days I prefer a "good" TV series to a "good" movie. But I suspect that's because I now watch movies on TV instead of the big screen.

If you want another line on what might constitute a good film, you could do worse than check out the following excellent exchange which evolved from a review of The Warriors:

Leapster

For what it’s worth, I’ve been reviewing movies for a bazillion years, and here’s how I break it down:

- How well does a movie achieve what it’s trying to do? (Obviously including “How well does it work AS A MOVIE.)

- How much worth doing was the thing/s it was ‘trying to do’? (Speaking to the ambitions and limitations of the movie in question, including its generic limitations, how it approached those, and such considerations as the limitations I mentioned in “The Warriors”. ) You could call also this approach: “Was this trip really necessary?”

- Do I think this movie would appeal to sections of the audience, and if so why, and maybe to a lesser extent, who?

- Did I like the movie and WHY? Without the why, it’s just like most comparisons about movies, TV etc in general conversation - which to me breaks down to everyone sitting around and saying, in not so many words, “But my farts don’t smell and yours do” or “Mine goes up to eleven.”

Any reviewer (most of whom erroneously call themselves ‘critics’) who refuses to get down in that bear pit of the mind and grapple full contact with any movie, putting preconceptions to one side - taking on what that movie is trying to be with no consideration for other things you might prefer it to be - is just not fit for the job. To give one example that comes, not so much to mind, but right up the nostril - Marge Pomerantz. By the time Margaret Pomerantz has said “I”, “But IIIII think”, “IIIIIIIIII have to say…”, “IIIII really felt that…” and “It just didn’t grab MEEEE” about 25 times apiece, in her opening 37 seconds of dissertation on some poor megaplex movie, I’ve already flipped the channel, got a sport score, been disappointed by an old Quickdraw McGraw cartoon, discovered a Saturday Night Live episode I realise I’ve already seen, and settled on “Law and Order: Initials in the Title”.

There’s not one thing that coffee-table magazine-headed person has to say about movies that I find convincing. I don’t believe for one second that she has any structure of thought - any consistently applied critical methodology - from which her opinions arise. I don’t care what she likes, nor if she feels that her farts have the aroma of lavender. To me, anyone could do what she’s doing - the corner milk-bar proprietor, the local footy team’s redoubtable half-back flanker, the slack-jawed guy behind the counter at the petrol station - anybody.

Criticism or reviewing is more than about what someone likes.

It’s a bit like the old fallback position in the pub or at a social gathering or whatever when movies or TV or music is being discussed and inevitably some drongo (who might otherwise be a lovely person) comes out with the old jocular brain- killer: “Weeell, it’s all a matter of opinion anyway, isn’t it?”

What any individual likes is a matter of opinion. Actually not even that - it’s mostly a baseline reaction, and not very much more. Did that music bounce off your eardrum in a personally pleasing manner. Did you have a nice night at the movies because everything blew up on screen in the right order and you had a nice night with your pardner away from the kids. Did that TV show provide the perfect time-filling chewing gum for your mind when you came home dog-tired and wanted something to half-watch while you were chowing down on tonight’s improvised ‘pasta a la whatever was left over in the fridge that wasn’t moving’.

All perfectly valid in its way, which is to say emphatically nothing to do with critical thought whatsoever. That’s the “mass-media as lifestyle adjunct”.

I remain unconvinced that “It’s all a matter of opinion.” I think there’s a difference between whether someone likes/enjoys a movie/album/program and whether that item is any good in any objective sense. Good is better than bad. Objectivity is a possibility. A critical hierarchy is possible where there is some sense of a medium’s history, an understanding of critical thought, a degree of intellectual rigour, not to mention the willingness to roll up the mental sleeves, get down in the bear pit and fight the artefact 2/3 brutal falls to a finish on its own terms. All that fun stuff like that there.

Anyway, that’s how I think about movies and reviewing them. I’ve kind of got lost on whether that was anything to do with what we were saying about “The Warriors”, although I think it kind of was.

Pokksey

Sorry, Larry, I just don’t buy all that.

Although your philosphy on the responsibility of criticism is honourable it just isn’t practical. Most people are interested (albeit a little selfishly) in the reviewer and not so much the movie. When viewers tune in to ‘At the Movies’, many do so because they identify with the host(s). They want a recommendation because ‘They like the type of movies I like’ - a kind of referral system. Or they get off on the irrascible David Stratton indignant over the latest movie employing the Dogma technique. Some just like to see them argue. And the same goes for countless other reviewers.

Surely, you must get the sense that people reading your blog reviews are reading it because of the allure of your personality. That is, how you react to a film, how you rationalise those reactions, and your deft comedic flourishes. This is just human behaviour - an entertaining form of quality assurance, if you will. Most movie-goers are simply trying to avoid wasting their time and money. The goal of the filmmaker is the last thing on their minds. It is impractical to expect more from the viewing public and therefore not feasible to expect reviews that practice ‘intellectual rigour’ as you put it. What you are looking for lies in the academic realm and can be found in published film journals, of which I know few. Maybe this is where the Critic/Reviewer distinction can be made.

Your criterion of “How well does a movie achieve what it’s trying to do” is a slippery slope. How do we know what is trying to be achieved? When do we agree it has been met? Must we do homework before seeing the movie? Should the movie improve the more informed we are? How does this function with comedy? Is the movie doubly funny because I laughed and it says ‘Comedy’ on the DVD spine?

Good filmmakers don’t focus on what they are consciously trying to achieve, rather they tap into their subconscious. This is why I find it easy to label directors who prattle on about their “goal” or “vision” as self-important. Even an intellectual director such as Kubrick was renowned for waiting for something “special” to happen on set, something only the subconscious can identify. The Coens’ art lies in their writing from the subconscious, picking up bits and pieces from people they know, movies they’ve seen, books they’ve read. Mike Leigh literally follows his characters around, listening out for the right moment. The planned goal is a moving target and anyone who thinks they can pinpoint it is fighting a losing battle. A filmmaker can ask, ‘Why did I make the character do that?’, but, ultimately, all the talk about themes and inspiration is nothing but retrofitted rationalisations on how important the movie must be. The correct answer is: it felt right and it was interesting for some reason. I find that the moment we consciously understand the filmmaker’s intention is the moment the movie breaks character and reveals itself as a limited construct trying to fool us. Where’s the art in that?

Comparing movie tastes is, like you say, comparing farts. But you are dismissing how interesting this process can be. Many of the movies we like are determined by what we project onto them, not always because of the artistic merit of the filmmaker. Being baffled by the unsavoury choice of another’s favourite movie requires further inquiry about that person. The type of world you are suggesting is one where the movie’s merits can be ‘proven’ and the viewer’s life experiences has no part in the cycle of life immitating art immitating life. I would suggest that you give more credit to the baseline reaction you speak of, because there is a lot more going on there.

LA GRAND DELUSION

Leapster gets stuck into the NYT book/list of The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made. I wish I'd written the post.

THE 137 GREATEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME, PLUS 863 UNMITIGATED CALAMITIES

or

How 100+ years’ worth of technological development, craftsmanship, creativity and genius led inexorably to the invention of National Lampoon’s Animal House.

Don't agree with an opinion expressed therein? Hate mail to the usual address. Or in the comments. It's your decision to make.

THE EX-PATRIOT

Heath Ledger is dead. The Guardian:

Heath Ledger 1979 - 2008

On the very day of the Oscar nominations being announced for 2007, the Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead in a Manhattan apartment. Born in Perth, in western Australia, Heathcliff Andrew Ledger would have been 29 this April 4th. First reports of his death mentioned drugs in evidence, but no one really knows enough yet to say anything except how great the loss is. Ever since he played Mel Gibson's son in The Patriot (2000), it was apparent that his striking handsomeness went hand-in-hand with high ambitions as an actor, courage in the roles he took and a fierce intelligence.

------------------------------------------------------

ThaDude: It's Western Australia, not western Australia. It's the name of the state, which makes it a proper noun. Please fix.

Crosby99: For crying out loud, a young man is dead and you are arguing over a point of pedancy.

Vealmince: That's 'pedantry'.

THE YOMEGA MAN

Not spruiking yo-yos, just getting dibs on any future headline for this fillum:

Triumph of Will

There’s an incredible sense of loneliness and despair in director Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend, which for a good portion of its running time proves to be a surprisingly hard-edged and intelligent science- fiction thriller—certainly a good deal sharper than one might expect from a holiday blockbuster starring the former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

This is the third big-screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s cult fave 1954 novel, and we’ve walked these empty streets before—not just with Vincent Price in 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, but more memorably alongside Charlton Heston in that bonkers 1971 cheese-fest The Omega Man. Devoted fans are already setting the Internet ablaze, debating and dissecting this new film’s diversions from Matheson’s sacred text.

Despite a sledgehammer-like advertising blitz - often a fair indication a film's a dud - I Am Legend looks as though it might go alright. More than alright if it's even remotely within cooey of any "bonkers 1971 cheese-fest".

LIFETIME ACHEIVEMENT AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN BONKERS CHEESE FESTS

Paul Koslo, with a pedigree rooted in The Omega Man, Vanishing Point, Mr Majestyk, Heaven's Gate, countless TV shows AND Chained Heat II, deserves our acclamation for his fine body of work.

SPOILERS!

Sort of spoilers, anyway, since I'm only guessing.

Put this review: "the wife and daughter he sent to the country when the city was quarantined" together with this review: "as for that ending … sigh" and what do you think you're going to get? Sigh... what you won't get is Will Smith dead in a fountain.

SHTAKEOUT

Do you remember those two Stakeout films with Emilio Estevez and Richard Dreyfuss? Of course you do; although only barely, since you've been trying to repress the memory ever since. Well, wrack your little grey-cells and rate them out of ten; say, from 0.8 to 0.95. If you then multiply your rating by ten you will arrive at the rating for another stakeout film, last year's The Lives Of Others. Das Leben der Anderen to its friends, or more pointedly, its comrades.

Leigh Paatsch, whose name suggests he might know a good German vilm when he sees one, rated it the best film of the year in yesterday's Herald Sun:

This supercharged psychological thriller marked only the first feature from young German writer-director Florian Henkel von Donnersmark. Filmmaking debuts rarely arrive so fully formed. Mind-bending twists and subtle shifts in tone were effortlessly deployed throughout a gripping portrait of life on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s. Hollywood is already labouring hard on a remake, but they won't get anywhere near the punsishing perfection here.

Fingers crossed Hollywood aren't looking at Stakeout as a template.

Broadly speaking, DLDA revolves around the lives of five people: actress Christa-Maria Sieland, playwright Georg Dreyman, Stasi officers Anton Grubitz and Gerd Wiesler, and politician Bruno Hempf.

The five are drawn together in a relatively simple plot: vat kat Hempf is obsessed with Christa-Maria and instructs Grubitz to "find something on" Dreyman so that he can have a clear run at Christa who he is already... well, pestering is too light a word. Grubitz in turn orders Wiesler, his top investigator, to set up a surveillance post in Dreyman's roof-space.

For various reasons I rate the likes of Narrow Margin, The Killing and Ride Lonesome as close to perfect films. They are not my favourite films, although I like them very much, it's just that they get it right. They contain no false steps; they are not too long; the scripts are tight; there is no unnecessary garnish.

DLDA is that sort of film.

And more.

The performances are astonishing. Sebastian Koch as Dreyman is probably the lesser of the five, but that's not of itself a bad thing since the other four are all brilliant. Martina Gedeck is sensational as Christa. Ulrich Mühe is startling as the "good" Stasi officer who develops a conscience. Mühe was an actor in East Germany in the 80s and lived the kind of life depicted in the film. (Allegedly, anyway, since his recollections are a matter of some contention.) Former stage actor Ulrich Tukur is sensational as Grubitz, the "bad" Stasi official with sense of humour; it's not a nice sense of humour, but it's a sense of humour nevertheless. And Thomas Thieme plays the horrendous Hempf. Have you seen Happiness? Well, recall Dylan Baker, the filthy rock-spider who molests kiddies...  and recall the part of you that can't help but like him. The same goes for Minister Hempf.

The mood is klaustraphobic. Of course, this is East Germany, so you knew that going in. You know the Stasi are everywhere, you know what the main protagonists will be up to. But that doesn't make living it through a film any less of a completely enthralling experience in which there are no black and white resolutions.

Then there's the look of East Berlin. The GDR is often criticised as a cold grey place. It probably was. But on film I've always found it to be a strangely beautiful city. Obviously I wouldn't have wanted to live there, but the stark, damp, empty East Berlin streets that so often show up in the movies hold, for me, a strange allure.

If there's one DVD you get over Christmas, make it The Lives Of Others, one of the best films of this century, if not The Best. A great grey film. If nothing else it will keep you entertained when your crazy aunt starts on about that time you picked your nose on Santa's lap.

FUCKEN OATHS!

Last week (but for what seemed like five years) 774 invited callers to promise good deeds.

Day of Love Pledge

Remember the last time a neighbour popped by with lemons from their tree? Or when you pitched in at the local childcare centre's working bee? Then you'll know that warm glow you get from helping out.

Listen in on stories of good deeds done and call in with your Day of Love pledges.

One little girl even rang through to say she was going to give her pocket money to a homeless man. Awww. She also promised not to punch her little brother. Awww. Awww.

Dunno who thought up this sickening, sanctimonious, saccharine suck-fest, but look out if you are an ABC listener in another state; this kind of virus spreads faster than ebola at a Congan mission, and it's twice as toxic.

Speaking of pledges, here's the Green Guide's Movie of the Week.

Sadly, though, The Pledge is a little ponderous, its great and serious intentions lost in a desire by Sean Penn to make a muted slow-burn movie that will explode briefly into an agonised grief (rather like his big scene as an actor in Mystic River). One of the finest philosophical detective stories ever written is here a dirge with more artifice than depth. It is an American adaption of a European book.

If that's the Movie of the Week, what's the Turkey of the Week?

Sean Penn: has he ever made a good film? The Indian Runner: snore. The Crossing Guard: snore. Into The Wild: "After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness." I haven't even seen it and already I'm asleep.

TONY TEE'S TOURIST SEIZIN'

Recently caught Steven King's Desperation, a fillum in which tourists lob into the desert town of Desperation only to be nabbed by a psychotic local sherrif. That sounds fine, doesn't it, but as with much of King's gear, it drifts away to a flaccid morality lesson. Ron Perlman is typically great as the sherrif - "So, you're an organ donor... is that wise?" Trust me; it's better on film. - but Desperation fades away to a quasi-religious wank-fest lecture involving mining, earth spirits, exploitation and retribution. Not so much different to a lot of King's material, I suppose; it's OK in moderation, or when it's better balanced like Salem's Lot, which is gold (even the Aussie mini-series is pretty good), but too often King sets up his stories brilliantly, only to have his endings fall on their mystic arses.

But it's not Desperation per se that I'm on about here - check it out if you've nothing better to do - it's low budget schlockers. You see, I'm well enough educated, know lots about lots of things, have a pretty tightly tuned bullshit detector, have seen many, many so-called better movies to make comparisons with, yet here I am in my forties, well into my harumpfage, and I'd rather watch the likes of Desperation than pretty much any of the noted fillums that regularly appear on Foxtel, which is where I watch my movies.

Tell me "I simply must see Sommersault", brandish anything even slightly worthy in my dial and, to quote Terry Wallace, "I'LL SPEW UP!"

But why?

Why do I prefer ostensibly stupid movies like Deadbirds, Wrong Turn, John Carpenter's Vampires, and The Hitcher to anything that might get a glowing review in the weekend glossies? Surely it can't be as simple as me being simple. I mean, I like your important movies, your big movies, your famous movies, your foreign worthies, too, but nowadays you can stick them while I settle into the classics: Shock Waves, Impulse (the little ripper with Tim Matheson, not the nonsense with the over-rated Theresa Russell) or 2001 Maniacs.

TEDIUM COOL

Leapster has embarked upon a film review-a-thon. It should be well worth the reading given he's into the sort of movies one should be into: the ones he likes.

I love movies, of all kinds, and that sort of includes even a lot of the bad ones. At least I love to stick my head in the combat zone with most movies and grapple them within an inch of both of our lives. It passes the time. I figured if I’m going to be doing that once a day anyway, and I’ve got a website sitting there which is traditionally 99% antique wood-based old posts and cobwebs, I might as well combine both factors, and pass on some of the tedium to you. Thus the plan is, to write about the insanely divergent movies I’ll be catching up with on a daily basis, during my declining years, said rate of decline snowballing at a more impressive rate almost by the second.

Don’t look for any particular connection between these movies, because that way lies madness, I can assure you. The pictures will shuttle backwards and forwards all over movie history, not to mention genres, approaches, degree of inherent trashdom, ideal foodstuff to be consumed in accompaniment, aspic ratio, and any question of current availability. I’ll have grabbed them off the internet, out of JB Hi-Fi, off cable, or via some near-rusted-solid old videotape.

Whether it’s movies, music, TV or whatever, I’ve never bought the argument that the latest is necessarily the greatest, or the most worthy of being endlessly blathered about. An unconsidered popular culture leads to a puffy, foofy, bloated dead duck’s ding-dong of a popular culture, something that can be witnessed and confirmed on a daily basis in terms of the load of old rope put over as popular culture to an uncomplaining and thick-eared general public on a daily basis in newspapers, women’s toilet magazines, E! News type crap-storms, Ofrah Windsock, and the general downhill-run of network TV programming rosters. (Not to mention the aerated alfalfa that gets passed off as movie reviews in the mainstream media.)

From older movies (or albums, or whatever), and sometimes even stinky ones of a particularly arresting aroma, we can learn about where the popular culture has been, what bacterial strains of it survived, what didn’t, and why, and detect, if not an actual pattern, touchstones that trace a history of vital movie-making worth keeping, that still beats in the hearts of good, or at least galvanising, movies right now.

If all we see and talk about is the current megaplex cheese and its blue-vein ‘gourmet’ on a water-cracker art-house sidekicks, all we’re learning about there is, at most, contemporary commerce. Basically you’ll know what sells a choc-top this week. Not that that’s not an area worth keeping an eye on, but that’s business studies and nothing to do with any aesthetic of movie criticism.

Any form of pop culture criticism basically is the opposite of any code of football. The latter automatically requires air under pressure, and the former already has too much of it. Read the newspaper movie reviews and tell me I’m wrong.

No matter how many housing developments’ worth of bricks you can successfully manufacture without straw, you can’t make perspective without perspective. You got to see the movies. All kinds of movies. You got to get down in the pit and grapple with them suckers. You can’t just brush off the ones you feel inherently and mystically “above” somehow. That’s the Marge Pomerantz school of coffee-table reviewing.

It really helps if you love the idea – the medium, if you will Hortense – of movies. ‘Critics’ who think they’ve somehow become one of the cool kids just because they review movies are deluding themselves on the public’s time. They’re still the same Harry-high-pants nerdenheimers who got routinely victimised at school, proving that the whole area of bullying needs a comprehensive re-evaluation in terms of valid sociological benefits. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of them about, and they’re about as useful in the long run as the impacted movie-nerd types who write in critical jargon code to other movie nerds and leave basically the entire general public high and dry.

My movies and reviews might leave you none the wetter or the better, but I don’t just play favourites, I don’t care how old the movie is or isn’t, and I have no shame over whether the movie company I keep might inherently make me look like an idiot to some snooty espresso-breathing, black shirt buttoned to the neck, Hal Hartley jibber-jabbering horse’s patoot.

Now stroll on over to see what Leapster has been watching, and make sure you check back later for subsequent reviews.