Shameless Self Expression

Ryan Reynolds plays an American truck driver in Iraq working for a private contractor. He has awoken to find himself buried alive inside a coffin! Apparently, his unit was ambushed by insurgents and Reynolds was taken prisoner. He has a pen, a lighter, and mobile phone (with a weak signal and not much battery left) with him, the latter of which he uses to call his elderly mother, as well as the Feds to try and get someone to find him. He also gets a call from the terrorist who kidnapped him who is demanding he ask the US government for a ransom of five million dollars, and they also want him to make a video with his phone. Although the action never leaves the coffin, we hear various voices on Reynolds’ phone including 911, the Pentagon (both of whom put him on hold at the worst frigging possible time), the State Department (including Bill Paterson as a well-meaning but not very useful representative of the Hostage Working Group), his wife back home (Samantha Mathis), his cruelly un...

Review: Psycho ****SPOILERIFIC REVIEW**** Save the review for later if you’re one of the two people with no lives who haven’t seen this film already. You’ve been warned... Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a woman on the run after having stolen money from her employer, who decides to stop for the night at Bates Motel. Here she meets the Motel’s strange, meek owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), who is a real mummy’s boy. John Gavin plays Leigh’s lover Sam Loomis, whilst Vera Miles’ is Marion’s worried sister and Martin Balsam turns up as nosy detective Arbogast. John McIntire (as the local sheriff), Mort Mills (as an intimidating motorcycle cop), Simon Oakland (as a psychiatrist), and Patricia Hitchcock (as Marion’s co-worker) offer support. This 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller is a very good film, and probably one of Hitch’s five best films. However, there has always been something holding me back from loving it as much as I love the other four Hitchcock fil...

George Peppard is humourless, super-ambitious Bruno Stachel, a lower-middle class German whose ruthless (and sometimes reckless) pursuit of the title medal (the highest awarded by the Germans) ostracises him from his fellow flyers, all of whom are aristocrats with ‘Von’ or ‘Baron’ somewhere in their names (and all of whom would shun the commoner anyway). Jeremy Kemp is the top pilot whom Stachel immediately rubs the wrong way, with James Mason playing Kemp’s uncle, General Count von Klugermann (who sees great PR potential in Stachel due to his flying heroics. Germany needed a hero at the time), and Ursula Andress is Mason’s gorgeous wife, whom Peppard will naturally try to seduce. Karl Michael Vogler is Peppard’s commanding officer, who despises his recklessness, and Anton Diffring (contractually obligated to play a German in any WWI or WWII film, it seems) is Mason’s attaché. Underrated 1966 WWI aerial warfare film is in my view the best of its kind, and the career high for jour...

Set in the titular industrial city north of Sydney (I didn’t even know it had beaches!), this surfie drama concerns Lachlan Buchanan, an aspiring surfer like his bullying, embittered elder half-brother (Reshad Strik) who had to give up a promising career himself after an injury. Now Buchanan has just been booted from trials for the Junior Surf Pro and just wants to get away from it all. And when he’s offered the chance to go away for a weekend with his mates (including the equally irresponsible Israel Cannan and cool ‘Bronzed Aussie’ Kirk Jenkins), he jumps at the chance, even if it means having to let his effete, possibly gay brother Xavier Samuel tag along (who seems to have a crush on or at least hero-worship Jenkins). The gang also acquire a couple of bikini babes (Rebecca Breeds and Debra Ades) along the way, to make things more pleasing on the (male) eye. Shane Jacobson and Joy Smithers play the parental figures, the former works in the coal industry with brooding Strik, whom he...