Weekly Round-Up

In an attempt to keep each week a bit more interesting I’m going to try and do a weekly round-up of all the movies I watched during that particular week. I’ll only do the upcoming stuff because frankly I don’t believe anyone cares to know about the weird Mexican flick from 1968 I somehow managed to watch.

Or if you do, let me know. I’ll add it in the next tally.

First up this week was Barney’s Version. Rather successfully at last year’s Sundance, this was a title I was quite looking forward to.

And it starts strong enough. Paul Giamatti plays the titular character Barney who is a cranky, cantkencareous fella and he finds himself remembering his life due to a run-in with a figure from the past.

The film then morphs back to 1974 and we follows Barney through 3 marriages, a murder investigation and various other weird bits of his life.

Although I enjoyed Barney’s Version , I also felt that it was spectacularly problematic. The second half of the film halts the plot almost completely which in turn makes the film lose momentum. And its’ this loss that the film never recovers from.

Nonetheless I think it’s a fun enough watch.

The second film I attended this week was Black Swan about which I shall say nothing. I intend to cover it in a piece this week. Oh go on I’ll say one thing: Masterpiece. And another: Forget the plot.

My third foray into the cinema was to catch ‘Animal Kingdom’; another Sundance darling. And this time the festival crowd and I saw eye to eye – I loved the film – it’s a dangerously subtle and fantastically underplayed crime drama which would be the perfect companion’s piece to last year’s fantastic Aussie ‘The Square‘ which no one watched.

So do a double bill next week.

Oh and I also saw Travellers. I’m not even going to give it the luxury of having its’ title in bold. The most atrocious afternoon I’ve spent in the cinema for a while and I’ve seen Burlesque. It made me want to weep openly .

That’s the weekly cinema round-up – tomorrow you might see a DVD round-up. Let me know if it’s actually of any interest.