Rian Johnson created quite a buzz with his low-budget debut, Brick. The Brothers Bloom is his much-anticipated follow-up. Well you can exhale, all you breathlessly excited Johnsonites. The news is not good. This thing’s a fizzer.

Not everyone thinks so, of course. Some critics have raved. The woman sitting behind me was shrieking her delight from the opening frames. Her shrill expulsions drilling through my cranium to rattle my teeth didn’t help my mood, it has to be said. But then, neither did the tiresome slapstick stunts that set her epiglottis all aquiver – eg: a reckless driver crashing her deluxe sportscar into her front wall; various sundry items being blown up for the hell of it. That’s the sort of obvious, clowny stuff Johnson has served up as humour here; there’s precious little wit in the dialogue. Continue reading ‘The Brothers Bloom’ – Movie Review →

I was one of many teenage romantics in the 70s who harboured some half-baked Marxist ideals. That is, until I got around to actually reading Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Great opening: “A spectre is haunting Europe.” Shame about the rest. It quickly became apparent to me that Karl wasn’t factoring in something rather important – human nature.

A glimpse behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ during an extended travelling stint in the early 80s dispelled any lingering illusions about communism. I stayed a few days in Budapest, spent a day on the bleak side of the Berlin Wall, and voila – cured. Capitalism was far from perfect, but it was a helluva lot better than the alternative in practice. And that was the end of the debate as far as I was concerned.

Or was it? I wasn’t thrilled with my lot in the happy cappy system, and as time has progressed I have become less and less content. I am in contempt of the dull materialism that has us by the nuts. I am in contempt of the state of management in this country. I am in contempt of the rampant selfishness that you encounter daily, of the “me first” mentality that is endemic in these dreary times. To misquote Brando in On The Waterfront, ask me what I’m in contempt of and I’ll answer “whaddayagot?”

My gripes certainly include Michael Moore. Moore is, to my mind, a propagandist of the first order, not to mention an egotist. As I see it, he has made a career (and multiple millions) from hijacking the Left and making it his own – not to mention attaining a notoriety that has guaranteed him a place in the public spotlight that I suspect he has always coveted. Continue reading ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ – Movie Review →