Shameless Self Expression

Usually unflappable hitman Bill Nighy (who is feared by reputation only because no one has ever even seen him he’s that elusive) is pestered by his elderly mother Eileen Atkins (no stranger to killing herself) to produce an heir. He’s been hired to kill a young con artist (Emily Blunt- whose name always sounds like naughty Cockney rhyming slang to me), but finds he just can’t go through with it. However, this is mostly due to circumstance (something continues to get in the way), rather than just second thoughts. Instead he saves her life in a parking garage (i.e. He kills a rival hitman for muscling in on his turf), taking along a young garage employee (Rupert Grint) for good measure as they flee Nighy’s replacements, sent by mobster Rupert Everett. Grint even manages to bump one of them off himself. Blunt, not knowing that Nighy is actually a hitman (not to mention one hired to killer her ) pays him to be her personal bodyguard and Nighy begrudgingly accepts.   Needless to say,...

Set in the early 00s, Ewan McGregor plays a journalist who in an effort to prove his worth to the wife who has just left him, goes to Iraq to cover the war there. At a bar in Kuwait he runs into a guy (George Clooney- with Tom Selleck’s facial hair), whose name he recognises from a list of names of operatives in a psychic warfare program by the US Government created in the 80s. Called Psi-Ops (or ‘Jedi Warriors’, Har-Har), they’re a special brand of ‘super soldier’. He got this information from a weirdo (Stephen Root) who claimed he had videotape evidence of his ability to kill a hamster with his mind (The title comes from a similar experiment to stop a goat’s heart). Anyway, McGregor decides to tag along with Clooney and learns about the New Earth Army, a hippy-dippy movement started by a Dude-like Vietnam Vet named Django (played by Jeff Bridges of course). Clooney at the time was considered the NEA’s top Jedi Warrior. We also learn how the NEA was overtaken by an ambitious Jedi Wa...

I, like Bill Maher am an atheist, bordering on agnostic. I mean, I generally do not believe in God, certainly not the God worshipped by any organised religion, but who in the hell really knows and who even knows if it’s important to know? Maybe this- life, the thing we’re all experiencing now, is the one and only important thing. I say this because the subject of Maher’s 2008 documentary, directed by Larry Charles (the infamous “Borat” and “Bruno” ) is religion, from the point of view of devout atheist comedian/TV host Maher. So it’s kinda hard to watch a film like this without your own opinions coming into play. I mean, I’m sure there are countless seriously devout religious people out there who will refuse to even see this potentially offensive (well, almost certainly offensive) criticism, and frequent mocking of, religion. That is their right, no doubt about it, and even if you are a religious person who is open-minded and critical, you’ll still probably wince a few times when Mah...

Set in WWII England with American flyboys losing a commanding officer (Gary Merrill) accused of being too friendly and compassionate, and gaining a new one in rigid, aloof Gregory Peck (as a character named Brig. General Frank Savage, no less!), who despite being friends with the former, is the man who recommended he be replaced. Needless to say, the anal-retentive, humourless Savage doesn’t gel with the men under his leadership, particularly early on. And he doesn’t have it easy, his crew is poorly looked upon, but Peck stoically and rigidly tries to whip them in to shape, nonetheless. Whether they like him or not, or whether he likes them or not, is of no consequence to him...or is it? Millard Mitchell plays Savage’s superior, Hugh Marlowe does his best Robert Ryan impersonation as a somewhat untrustworthy (in Peck’s eyes at any rate) Lieutenant Colonel, and Paul Stewart scores in a small role as a possibly too compassionate doctor. As Savage’s one ally, Dean Jagger gets perhaps th...