RAVE - Puncture

Based on a true story.

Crack smoking Mike Weiss is one half of Danziger & Weiss, the 'David' of a lawyer firm up against the 'Goliath' of US hospitals. These hospitals won't buy their clients' superior syringe, because they say their existing purchasing contracts prevent them from doing so. The fact that these syringes are loved by those hospital's nurses is just a detail.

The hospital doctors have signed a deal with the providers, paying them a commission on purchases they make from those providers.

Danziger & Weiss take on United Medical Health Supplies, the organization that represents the vendors, and their lawyers begin background checks on D&W, and their witness.

While D&W are hemorrhaging money, UMHO makes a generous contribution to a senator's re-election campaign, the only senator that's helping back their case. Needless to say, the senator withdraws her support for D&W's case. Meanwhile, the main source of D&W's regular legal work tells them they can't sub-contract any more legal work to them.

This is typical of a gripping case which has you locked in from the start. How it ends up affects everyone who ever gets an injection.

Serious stuff. This is a great film that, if it had a bigger cast would have been more successful, but no better.

REVIEW - Seconds Apart

This is a slick, well-made movie about 15-year old twins and their messed up lives. Not only are they weird, their telepathy makes weird things happen around them. School friends die in strange circumstances. 

Annoyingly, the detective investigating them keeps going off into dreams - one where he's alone in a building that's on fire, another where he's alone in an ice cave. I'm no doctor, but I'd say he has a problem with temperature.

Anyhow, the twins are causing these dreams, through their telepathic, er, skills. Quite how is unexplained, and unexplainable.

RAVE - Kill The Irishman

A cross between The Untouchables, and something a bit rougher and readier than that. This is the true story of an Irishman christened The Robin Hood of his neighborhood.

The Irishman in question is Danny Green, a worker on the up. He muscles his way into a union position on the docks, then as an enforcer for a local money-lender in Cleveland. Eventually, his practices come to the attention of local Detective, Val Kilmer. Now is not the time to go on about the state of Mr. Tubs Kilmer, so I won't.

Things get a bit messy when the genuine Mafia starts to try and take him out, blowing up his car and his house, and taking pot shots at him when he was out taking a run.

One news quote made me laugh: "That summer of '76 there were 36 bombs in Cleveland, and the Danny Green war made national news". It says something about the violence of the times when it took Iraqi levels of violence in a small city like Cleveland to make national news.

I won't tell you how it end, but you can probably guess it.

REVIEW - Haywire

A strangely pitched Steven Soderbergh thriller. It's part Bourne, with it's brisk fight scenes, but these feature a woman. She's an independent operative, employed by the US Government for projects that are a teensy bit nefarious. 

She's double crossed on one such project, and it takes her from Barcelona, to the USA, to Dublin, to Majorca to sort it out.

It's all a bit cold, the action could have done with a bit less of the ice-cold agent. Certainly, all of the agents I've met have been decent, level-headed folk.

Ewan MacGregor and Antonio Banderas are pointless gloss. I barely noticed Michael Fassbender and Bill Paxton. Michael Douglas has got a pair though. Getting paid for taking a stroll in a film like this. Embarrassing.

There's not much to recommend this one I'm afraid.

RANT - Alyce

What starts with a night out, develops into Alyce pitching her girlfriend off a roof, and goes downhill from there.

While the rooftop incident is an accident, Alyce torpedoes down into an affair with drugs, and an affair with her drug dealer, murder and some weird stuff with a guy she picks up from a bar. Needless to say, she is out of control. And it only gets worse.

In the end, a pointless portrait of madness, different only in that it's on the part of a woman.

As I said, pointless.

REVIEW - Atlantis End of a World Birth of a Legend

It's hard to judge this - is it a serious review of the history surrounding this alleged civilization destroyed by a natural disaster, or a mammoth fairy tale.

The "facts" aren't many - a Greek mythology with "great wolves", "a half human, half beast Minotaur". and other fanciful creatures competing against human slaves while a bronze age civilization pranced around doing impersonations of Spartacus in and around Crete, in what we know as the Minoan Empire.

Specifically, the Greek writer Plato tells of the island of Thiera, destroyed by an ancient volcano in The Mediterranean.

It all sounds about as likely as Harry Potter.

REVIEW - 1911 Revolution

A glossy - for China - attempt to cover the revolution brought to China in 1911, and the founding of the Chinese Republic.

Led by Sun Yat-sen, it seems more like several revolutions than one. The size of China made it difficult for a single campaign to overthrow the Qing dynasty, and there seemed to be a number of parties keen to get in on the action.

It must also have been difficult to establish a single version of the truth - if indeed there is one - when so many interests were at stake.

Still, this is a creditable attempt to construct a cohesive story out of this, notwithstanding the fact that people like Jackie Chan are involved, injecting a wholly unnecessary element of kung fu on the proceedings.  Ha!

Trouble is, it's not one or the other. It's not a warts 'n all narrative history of the fall of the last great Empire, and it's certainly not a classic Chinese fight movie.

REVIEW - A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy

A modestly humorous film, spoiled by its stupidity.

A group of 8 friends spending a summer at one of their father's holiday homes on the coast are desparate to come up with a theme for their last party of the season.

They've done trailer trash, Star Wars, 50s and 70s, so they decide to have one themed around an orgy, a good old-fashioned one.

A little bit raunchier than an episode of Benny Hill, it trundles along, attempting to make a few serious statements along the way, but generally falling short on the intelligence quotient.

Even the party itself is a bit of a damp squib, nothing to get all hot and bothered about.

RANT - Another Happy Day

Playing like an episode from Harried in the Hamptons, this film is dire. It's featured family is fractured, it's main, divorced couple is incessantly arguing, it's old father is dying, it's two aunts are neurotic, it's mother has alzheimers, it's grandsons are assorted wasters. And that's the good part.

I don't know. If my family was half as screwed up as this one, I'd be pressing the doc for stronger medication.

A depressing slice of privileged life. Move along. Nothing to watch.

REVIEW - Wrecked

This failed to get a RAVE not because Adrien Brody didn't perform well. he did. Nor because it wasn't interesting. It was. What there was of it. And that was the real problem.

The film started with Big Nose in a wreck, halfway down a 100 foot ravine, banged up and unable to get out of his car, He was kept company by a dead man in the back of the car.

For the next hour, he huffed and he puffed, eventually managing to get the passenger door open and himself out onto the grass.

He has visions of his past, a life of crime, and he sees a dog and a mountain lion. Both real.

That's it. Seriously.

REVIEW - Horrible Bosses

3 guys

A dental assistant who's boss sexually abuses him. An accountant whose boss has led him along for years, pretending he's going to promote him. Another who is passed over by his boss when his father dies.

What was I saying?

I don't ever see films that are allegedly humorous?

Well I saw this one, and it was quite humorous. Funny for all the wrong reasons.

The three main characters - Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudiekis - are funny because they're not intrinsically funny people, not professional funny men.

Funny because of great performances by Jennifer Aniston - in a role she was heaven made for. For Donald Sutherland in a gentle little role in which he shone, and Colin Farrel for a role where you couldn't guess it was him. Oh, and Jamie Foxx playing a badass killer, who wasn't.

It was pretty funny.

RANT - Abduction

If there's anything worse than watching women limp around doing action movies, it's watching kids attempt to do it. 

This movie is about two teenagers triumphing against insurmountable - read, illogical - odds battling unknown agencies. The fact that you never quite work out who these agencies are is just one of the intensely annoying things about this.

But it's hardly the only thing you'll find annoying you. The fact that they happen to, d'uh find out accidentally, themselves, that Taylor Lautner is .. wait, I've revealed the major thing wrong with this film. It's that T.L is the main character. His are the massive fists given to pulverising the criminals. His are the eyes that piercingly gaze off into the distance to, um, pierce.

All a bit like a plate of bologna, when I was looking for good old pasta.

The story is so unlikely I'll not even bore you with the details.

RANT - Shark Attack

What a surprise, a film that trots out a tired old bore-fest about a shark attack on a yuppie party on a lake turns out to be derivative, cliched and pedestrian.

It shows just how those basics are in those Steven Speilberg classics - the characters, the plot, the importance of a story. They may have been hidden behind the towering effect, but that doesn't mean that someone with another spin on the same topic can get away with leaving them out entirely.

The fish was smaller, the victim was less important, the whole thing was just less of a production.

REVIEW - 50/50

I'm probably the world's worst person to review this.

I rarely watch "funny" movies. I find them lame. I prefer drama. I thought Hangover was funny, but gross. I didn't find Hangover 2 funny at all. I think Romantic Comedies are neither romantic, or comedic.

Which brings me to 50/50.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt discovers he has a rare form of bone cancer on his spine. His best friend, Seth Rogen, uses his only weapon - comedy - to contend with this news.

The alleged comedy is forced / strained and proves partly irrelevant in Gordon-Levitt's handling of the disease, thanks to the film's insistence on finding a way to turn it into a safer rom-com by having him fall for his youthful female therapist.

You're also able to use this device as a safety net, deciding to enjoy the rom-com nature, or the comedy angle according your leanings. That is, IF you have those leanings.

If you're like me, and don't, then do what I do. Imagine something else is on while watching this movie, something actually funny. It works.

RAVE - Ironclad

I guess it would be unhelpful to summarize this by saying "it all depends on what you're looking for", so I'll elaborate.

If you're looking for a 100% historically accurate tale of medieval England, with grand battle scenes and great cinematography, you'll probably not find this meets your prerequisites. 

If you're looking for a great character study of nobles, kings, and peasants, again you'll find this falling somewhat short.

However, if you're looking for something that's as bloodthirsty - but not as ridiculous - as 300, as down-to-earth as Russel Crowe's Robin Hood, but for 1/10th of the cost, and something much less flashy than Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom in Kingdom of Heaven, then this could be right up your street.

It's England, 1215. King John has been forced by rebel Barons to sign the Magna Carta, a document that gives new rights to free men, and restricts the King. The film focuses mainly on John's siege of Rochester Castle, which goes badly for him and leads to civil war.

For me it filled in some gaps of what I remembered from school - King John enlisting an army from Denmark to help in his fight against the rebel Barons, while the Barons in turn sought to persuade an army from France to invade England to dispatch the oily John.

All good, mud 'n guts stuff. Just don't expect the wife to like it.

RAVE - Ides of March

Ryan Gosling's a campaign worker, an aide to Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is campaign manager for George Clooney.

Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, and Marissa Tomei add to the stellar cast in this solid story about democratic Governer Clooney's bid for the party primaries: the infighting, corruption, the compromises, and other political shenanigans.

The film covers a few days, and many moves and counter-moves, in that campaign. It's not a thriller, but it is compelling, even riveting.

If I said it's a story about loyalty, and the loss of innocence, I'd sound too much like a professional critic. But that's what it's about, and hang the obscure, and - as far as this boy's grammar school education remembers it - irrelevant Shakespearian reference. The Ides of March? Pah!

RAVE - The Iron Lady

An Oscar-worthy portrayal of Margaret Thatcher by Meryl Streep, but not necessarily an Oscar-worthy movie.

The Iron Lady's story was told through the eyes of an aging Thatcher looking back on her life, talking to the ghost of her husband, and hence draped in sadness.

It was, above everything, a sad movie.

Streep got the accent, and demeanor down perfectly. Margaret Thatcher was not a likeable woman, and it's still weird to see how she held the men in her party and cabinet in her thrall.

It seems that governmental challenges - striking workers, militant unions, political backbiting, foreign intrusions - are on permanent repeat, so the way she contended with these dynamics is still relevant now, and made the movie sharp, and compelling.

It's just not this year's Kings Speech.

REVIEW - Seeking Justice

Word has it that in "real life" Nicolas Cage is broke, owing millions of dollars after repeated poor real estate investments.

If he carries on working on drivel like this, he's never going to get himself out of debt.

It's a shallow story of a New Orleans' teacher looking for revenge after his wife is violently mugged and raped. Guy Pearce appears out of nowhere to offer his "organization's" services to deal with the offender.

The story tries to get going - there are some potentially promising developments when Pearce gives Cage some tasks to complete as repayment for his services, but eventually those developments frustrate, rather than fuel the interest.

So, none of the 5 movies Nicolas Cage released in 2011 - Ghost Rider, Trespass, Drive Angry, Season of the Witch, and this dog - is any good. Tsk tsk, Nic.

RANT - Ecstacy

I'm not sure if the film's title describes one of the many drugs this group of party-mad girls tries out, but whatever it was this film is either required viewing for parents of teenage girls, or the last thing you'd ever want to watch if you were one of those parents - I can't decide.

The movie is a mess, a mish-mash of clubbing, whining, pill-swallowing, and the all-too-predictable disastrous results from that.

There are some weird suggestions - one that the local priest is drugging the congregation by adding crushed tablets into the communion wine - but that thread seems to lead nowhere. So we're left with middle-American youth in deep trouble.

Truthful perhaps, but not particularly entertaining.

If the director wanted us to learn that pills and techno lead to a miserable life, he succeeded. Other than that, I don't see the point in this movie.

And to cap it all, the film has a deeply unsatisfying end.

RAVE - Solbar, Calistoga

After a perfect day sampling wines from Cliff Lede and Joseph Phelps' wineries, we retired and partially revived at Joy's vacation home above Calistoga, and hit the town again Saturday night.

Rather than suffering from being part of a spa (and forcing salads on every guest), Solbar cleverly color-codes the "light" and the "hearty" dishes on the menu.

My hearty choices included the Duck Confit and the Wagyu Brisket "cooked sous-vide for 42 hours and then braised in its juices".  The rest of the party had scallops, escarole salad, pork belly, petrale soul, and the like.

Solbar is super-stylish, especially so for wine country, where "style" too often translates into cute foliage and a super-abundance of wine paraphernalia.

The michelin-starred restaurant boasts plenty of choices, and we pushed the boat out dessert-wise, with fried apple pie, basque cake, chocolate marquis, and lemon parfait with chopped cookies.

Definitely a place to re-visit, perhaps on a warmer evening where we can sit outside in the glamorous gardens.

RAVE - JoLe, Calistoga

We met up with the aforementioned Woodie and Bill (see Limon), and their Houstonian friends Joy and Vee-Ann, in the superb bar at JoLe. 

They had brought with them several bottles of wine from places they'd visited using a Calistoga wine passport, which meant no corkage fees with our dinner!

I'm not sure what everyone had, as the meal was picked up by Woodie and Bill :) but I do recollect seeing and tasting some Grilled Cauliflower (with Medjool dates, Marcona almonds, and chorizo), and saw Mrs. Page guzzling the Scallops (with Red Kuri squash, broccoli di ciccio, and brown butter). 

My own choices included a special (not on the menu, so I can't check its exact description online) that involved "pork head and cheeks, deep fried", which tasted a million times better than it sounds. I also had the seared Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras, stewed red cabbage, candied pecans, and plum jam, curiously paired with Uni (sea urchin). While the inclusion of urchin didn't necessarily improve the dish for me, it didn't detract, and you'll all be happy to know I selfishly scoffed the lot.

JoLe is a wonderfully warm, inviting restaurant, and our group - judging by the noise we made - had a great time there.

RAVE - The Veteran

A British-made movie about a soldier returning from Afghanistan who is recruited by a secret organization that claims it's helping the UK battle terrorism within its borders.

His new role involves tailing suspected terrorists, but he frequently crosses the gangs on his local council estate, who are more interested in drugs than bombs.

Eventually, his anti-terror moves intersect with the gangs, and local estate mayhem ensues.

If the numbers claimed by the controllers in this film are true, about the thousands of UK-based terrorists being readied, this is serious stuff.

Not at all flashy, just a solid film with solid actors.

RAVE - Limon

The food was pretty good - perhaps not exactly RAVE-worthy on its own, but the company turned up the enjoyment factor several notches.

Bill and Woodie visited us from Houston, en route to our weekend in Calistoga. To honor Bill's student days in Peru, we ate at Limon, one of a number of Peruvian restaurants in The Mission district.

We shared ....

Ceviche Nikkei - Ahi Tuna marinated in soy sauce-infused leche de tigre, toasted sesame seeds, shredded nori, and celery.

Jalea - A mixture of crispy seafood, yucca and salsa criolla served with huacatay tartar sauce.

Costillas Nikkei - St. Louis style pork ribs with spicy sesame seed/soy sauce glaze and cole slaw.

Pescada Limon - Crispy snapper fillet, over crispy potatoes and spinach. 

Trigo and Vegetales con Pesto - Sauteed veggies and whole wheat, finished with cilantro pesto, parmesan wafer, grilled asparagus and red pepper sauce.

Chicharron de Pollo - Crispy pieces of chicken marinated in soy sauce, Garlic and aji Amarillo, served with salsa criolla.

Lomo Saltado - Traditional Peruvian style stir-fry of sirloin strips, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, soy sauce, garlic with fries and rice.

Truffled mac-n-cheese (because Bill said that when he was in Peru, he was always too broke to eat any of the fancier foods.

All of this washed down with a couple of jugs of perfect Sangria made this a fun place to eat and re-tell old stories.

RAVE - Treasure Island (2012)

I know The Streets weren't thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island when they released their CD Original Pirate Material, but that's pretty much what this story is.

Eddie Izzard is wonderfully cast as Long John Silver, although his accent, and most of the rest of the crew's, occasionally sound out of place. 

I always explain, to those who give a scurvy rat's ass about the subject, that the reasons cinematic Pirates all sound like they come from my home town of Weston-super-Mare are :

a) because back in the day the English navy's conscripts were hauled out of bars along the south and west coasts of England, and

b) most people can't tell the difference between the accents from Gloucester in the SW Midlands, around Bristol and the English south-west coasts to Portsmouth, so I sound like a Pirate.

Skipping these irrelevancies, this is absolutely the best pirate story ever written, and shows why I so despise Pirates of the Caribbean.

This story, while having been re-told many times since we read it at school, is still fabulously rich, and the characters - Blind Pugh, Ben Gunn, Jim Hawkins, Flint, and many more - are worth a thousand Jack Sparrows.

The book scared the crap out of me when I was 10, and I can still see why now.  This is an excellent re-telling, from Sky TV.

Pieces-of-Eight-tastic!

RAVE - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2012)

You'd think that after reading the book, and seeing the original Swedish movie, I'd remember the story details, but watching the Hollywood remake last night the story was fresh, and even better than that original.

Daniel Craig is always an understated, un-flashy actor - even as James Bond, for heaven's sake - so he perfectly fit the role of Mikael Blomqvist, the spare, embattled journalist in this film. Rooney Mara, as the skinny, pierced, tattooed, ultra-edgy hacker Lisbeth Salander was equally well-cast. 

Together, they address the mystery of Harriet Vanger, missing for 40 years, and uncover a string of gruesome murders.

The sharply-observed direction - for example when Blomqvist learns he's lost a libel case against arch-enemy Wellenstrom, buys a pack of Marlboro, takes one cigarette out, lights it, and throws away the rest of the pack - really highlights the characters.

All of this in the nastiest, sub-Arctic weather. Why would anyone live that far north?

Weather aside, this is a pulsating thriller, with not a second wasted in its over 2 hours of play-time. Tight, atmospheric, and genuinely exciting. But enough about Daniel Craig's underpants.

This is a great movie, in any language.

RAVE - A16 Again

Is this the best Italian restaurant in the city?

It certainly lines up with Delfina, Bar Bambino, and maybe Beretta, and against the North Beach Italians, in style, approach, and delivery. 

The latter are far too touristy, and maybe because of that seem to just turn out the same old same old, whereas A16 is definitely edgier, and more modern.

Whatever and however, it was another wonderful night out with our much-missed friends from Detroit, Felicia and David. 

Felicia's carrying O'Connor Junior, and my better half offered to drive, so it meant David and I glugged some outstanding Montepulciano, while we all shared the proscuitto tasting, goose and duck terrines, a salsiccia pizza groaning under the weight of its delicious toppings, and various pasta and lamb loin plates.

A16 is humungously busy every night of the week, and deservedly so.

REVIEW - Everything Must Go

A sad movie.

There it is. That's my review.

You want more?

Will Ferrel gets fired from his sales job. He drives home to find that his wife has left him, changed the locks on their house, emptied their joint bank account and dumped his stuff out on the front lawn.

He's an alcoholic, so accepts that all of this is his fault.

He's forced into a yard sale, to get rid of all the stuff on his lawn. Hence the title.

As I said.

It's a sad movie.

REVIEW - Dream House

While this is an otherwise decent movie, it's hard to give it a RAVE when there's one huge problem with it. Any story that assumes the main protagonist has completely forgotten an earlier passage in his life is just too hard to swallow.

I can't say too much about this element of the film, otherwise it'd ruin the outcome. But other movies that have employed the same plot device have been equally unsatisfying, notably Shutter Island. That movie ended with me groaning at having been duped throughout - made to believe that a story had unfolded when in fact it had all taken place in the mind of an asylum inmate. 

In Dream House, publisher Daniel Craig gives up his job to spend more time with his family, and write a book, in their new, rural house. Unbeknown to Mr. Craig, the former residents of the house were brutally murdered, and the murderer has recently been released from prison to a halfway house.

Bring on the shadowy figures, the spooky lurkers, the lurking spooks.

RAVE - You Heard It Here First

I'm far too modest to gloat, but ... over a year ago I ranted about alleged Cold-Pressed, Virgin Olive Oils, and how there were far too many of them on our supermarket shelves for them all to be genuine, and even if they were, they didn't warrant the big ups they were getting over warm, hooker Olive Oils. Well, lo and flippin' behold, this article appeared in today's Guardian.

The Italian fraud squad recently announced they were investigating allegations that the country's largest olive oil producers have adulterated Italian oil with cheaper imports from Spain, Greece, Morocco and Tunisia.

Fraud is extensive, particularly adulteration and false labeling. The world's largest former dealer in olive oil, one Domenico Ribatti, plea-bargained his way to 13 months in prison during the 1990s for passing off Turkish hazelnut oil, which he had refined in his own plant, as olive oil. Another prominent importer, Leonardo Marseglia – appropriately based in a town called Monopoli – has variously been accused of selling cheap non-European oils as Italian ones, fudging documents to shirk import tariffs and forming a criminal network to smuggle contraband. Marseglia has denied the charges.

A 2007 EU investigation found that 95% of all known misappropriations of European Union agricultural misappropriations occurred in Italy, telling us something of the culture in which Italian olive oil fraud was taking place.

George Bennell is the managing director of Belazu, which markets a delicious unfiltered olive oil from a small producer northern Spain, among other goods. "I don't know for sure that Spanish olive oil fraud is less common than Italian," he says. "But the fact is, the Spanish produce twice as much olive oil as the Italians, and the Italians consume and export more olive oil than they can produce, so they have to import it."

Olive oil is far from being the only commonly adulterated food finding its way into British supermarkets. A British trading standards officer said last month that "criminals are moving away from drug offences to counterfeiting [food ingredients], because they are looking at severely reduced jail times. You are looking at 10 years plus for drugs, whereas it's half that for counterfeiting." This echoes what one EU investigator told Tom Mueller: "Profits [in olive oil fraud] were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks."

Only last week consumers were warned again about counterfeit vodka, and one recent estimate based on data from the Food Standards Agency suggested that fraud could affect as much as 10% of all the food bought in the UK. This includes "wild" salmon that is actually nothing of the kind – it's estimated one in seven salmon sold as wild have in fact been farmed – to the labeling of products as organic and so on, in order to exploit specific scruples in the customers.

In 2010, a UK businessman was jailed for a $5m scam in which he labelled battery eggs as free range and sold them to retailers including Tesco and Sainsbury's. A few years earlier, an investigation found that basmati rice was being mixed with cheaper rice costing half as much. This kind of thing does appear to be on the rise - when a family friend arrived at Christmas last year with a magnum of Pol Roger, everyone was delighted; upon examination, the label looked to have been printed on a domestic inkjet.

______________________________________________

To be fair, the same article has recently appeared in the local, digital rags here in SF, but let's not forget that this on-the-money RANT from yours truly, plus that other one about Cash 4 Gold, means perhaps I should re-badge this blog as Digital Astrology Jumble.

I certainly shouldn't stop ranting! Despite what you say.

RANT - A Dangerous Method

I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the Producers of this movie first did the rounds looking for funding. 

"Hey, we've got a great idea for a film that takes a long, dark look at the intense relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud that gave birth to psychoanalysis". Silence.

"And listen to this, we think it could be a great vehicle for [smirk] Keira Knightley". More silence.

"Think of it, we could have Keira screeching, screaming and cackling interminably as the disturbed patient over which some deadly dull doctors, played by, let's say Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender, debate for months on end". 

Watching Knightley's face twitch as she grimaces her way through a Russian-but-sounding-bad-American accent makes me wonder why this "intense relationship" between Jung and Freud didn't give birth to a sharp slap across the face as the recommended method for dealing with people like her.

I know I'm stretching the point here a bit, but when one thinks of "Thriller", A Dangerous Method should probably be as far away from one's mind as, er, marshmallows.

Maybe that gulf between this film, and any action, kept making me wish director David Cronenberg would revert to type and have someone's head explode.

I got the movie - it's focus on deep, thoughtful conversation, but that didn't make it enjoyable on any other plane.

Of course, my predilection for poking fun at thinks is worthy of analysis too. Or you could just ask my wife what's wrong with me. She has tons of suggestions.

Hello, welcome to the psychiatric hotline:
If you are obsessive-compulsive; please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, and 5
If you are paranoid delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.

REVIEW - Final Destination 5

I don't know what it is about the Final Destination franchise. What could possibly be of any merit to have attracted me to each episode? Clearly it has to be the freaky accidents, because there's no actual plot in any of them.

In FD 5, as in 1-4, on a group excursion one of the party has a premonition about a humungous accident. In this story, it's a suspension bridge collapse. The person who had the premonition persuades a group of 6 or 7 to leave the scene of the impending disaster, thereby saving them all from horrible deaths.

Or does it?

Of course it doesn't. They each die in tragic accidents, each of which requires - for the film to exist - a succession of impossible coincidences to occur, culminating in a painful death for each unlucky person on the list.

Schlocky? Yes. Silly? Oh yes.

RAVE - Cafe Claude

What is it about French bistros and ratty lanes?

On Claude Lane we have Gitanes and Cafe Claude, and on nearby Belden Lane there's Cafe Bastille. And just around the corner - not on a lane, but on an unglamorous street, is Cafe Central. On summer days in the city these are gorgeous sun traps. On the first couple of days of a new year, they can be glum iceboxes devoid of light.

Good job then that the food at Cafe Claude is so good. Or at least that was true of my Frisee aux Lardons and Steak for lunch today. Pavey's Chevre, and Coquilles St Jacques were "OK" and no better.

Our server left a lot to be desired, but now that I've typed that in it could be taken for a compliment, at a restaurant. She didn't deserve a compliment, but my glass of Pastis made up for any shortcomings on her part.

RAVE - Colombiana

Bogota, 1992. 

When her parents fall foul of their drug-dealing partner, 10-year old Cataleya moves to stay with her uncle in Chicago. He's a gun-toter too, so she gets her wish to grow up as a paid killer for her uncle, and does regular business on the side in her quest to track down the gang that killed her parents, and its leader, Don Luis.

While some of the action is a little improbable, all in all this was an exciting revenge movie, and didn't tax the post New Year's Eve party brain too much.

RANT - Worst Movies of 2011

And as a satisfying counterpoint to the Top Ten, here are those movies I hated from 2011; a collection of drivel, dreck, and dross.

11/11/11
Anonymous
Black Swan
Captain America
Country Strong
Cowboys and Aliens
Exorcismus
I Spit On Your Grave 
Immortals 
The Last Rites of Joe May 
Man on the Train 
Never Let Me Go 
Slaughter 
The Last Exorcism 
Thor 
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 
Twelve

RAVE - Top Movies of 2011

I've selected the following Top Ten from among all those movies I raved about this past year. I gave up trying to put them in any order of preference, and I know Downton Abbey is a TV Series rather than a movie, but it got released like, and treated like a movie here in the U.S.

Red State

Downton Abbey

Moneyball

Unthinkable

Point Blank

A Prophet

A Better Life

Rise of The Planet of The Apes

Toast

Limitless

 And here are the rest of my 2011 RAVEs, movie-wise:

5 Days of War

13 Assassins

A Lonely Place To Die

Appropriate Adult

Baader Meinhof Complex

Barry Munday

Bhutto

Contagion

Essential Killing

Killer Elite

Margin Call

Page Eight

Senna

Sixty Six

Stone

The Adjustment Bureau

The American

The Debt

The Devil's Double

The Guard

The Thing (2011)

The Whistleblower

Triage

True Grit

RAVE - NYE at RN74

A great combo of things I love - New Years Eve, RN74, and friends Felicia and David.

Oh, and great wine and silly hats.

We started early at home, with champagne, snacks, a couple bottles of excellent red, and non-alcoholic cocktails for the mother-to-be and therefore handy driver for later on ;)

RN74 is an interestingly laid-out place, long and relatively thin. A reception and bar at the center, a lounge turned into boisterous dance-hall at one end, and the classy restaurant at the other end. 

The set menu had just enough choice to keep us happy, so we happily chose these dishes: 

• Musque de Provence Pumpkin soup - smoked hazelnuts, meyer lemon, espresso bean, mascarpone
• Ona Kanpachi Crudo - cucumber, radishes, black truffle, passion fruit, nache
• Steak Tartare - cauliflower, pine nuts, Dijon mustard, whole wheat flatbread, watercress
• Sauted Hudson Valley Foie Gras - foraged mushrooms, cipollini onions a la grecque
• Cascade Mountain Arctic Char - sauteed pork belly, french green lentils, brussels sprouts, parsnip veloute
• Daurade Royale, cardoons, new crop potatoes, king trumpet mushrooms, hollandaise mousseline
• Roasted Mary's Chicken - celery root potato gratin, anjou pear, swiss chard, sauce colbert

We ended at home, with totally un-necessary but nevertheless very tasty single malts.

I remember a healthy debate over dinner about baby's names, but can't remember the result.