Still with the movie reviews?

For some reason I've been watching a whole lot of DVDs lately. I suppose laziness. Over the Easter weekend I worked my way through three more - "The Prestige", "Capote" and "Kenny".

The Prestige was the best of these. It was directed by Christopher Nolan, who directed probably the only good Batman movie (Batman Begins) as well as Memento, which is one of my all time favourites. The film is about two aspiring magicians, who start off as friends, and become rivals, with one eventually killing the other (that's not really a spoiler since you see that happen in the opening scenes). The movie moves back and forward in terms of the timeline a lot, so can be difficult to follow at times, but it's worth it.



The two magicians are played by Hugh Jackman (who to me will always be the guy who explains how to use Foxtel on channel 999) and Christian Bale. I'm not really sure if I like Christian Bale or not. He was in the pretty horrible film version of American Psycho, although it wasn't really his fault the film was so bad. And that movie The Machinist which was meant to be a cross of "Fight Club" and "Memento" but was mainly just weird. He was scary thin in that, so much so that he seems quite overweight by comparison in The Prestige.

The film also stars Michael Caine as a mentor to both magicians, and Scarlett Johannsen as the girl who works as an assistant for Jackman and then Bale. I used to be a bit of a Scarlett fan but my interest is waning, and she did little to win me over in this.


Capote is a film I'd been planning on seeing for quite a while. I've read the first half of "In Cold Blood" - the book that this movie is about - two or three times. I feel like it's a book I should enjoy, so have returned to it a few times, but never manage to stick at it. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favourite actors - I think he just has a real presence to him - but I didn't really enjoy his performance in this all that much. Perhaps it was the fact that he sounded like Cartman from South Park that put me off, I'm not sure. I know the movie did become a lot more enjoyable when I started imaging Cartman in Capote's place in various scenes in the movie. Apparently people who give out awards for movies liked this but it wasn't really for me.

Finally, Kenny was some good lighthearted entertainment for a Sunday night. I'm not really a fan of Australian movies, or toilet humour, but this was well done, with a surprising amount of heart - I guess that's where all of the Castle comparisons come from. Worth checking out if you're looking for something lightweight.