The Sunday Screening Session…..
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
:: Posted 19 May 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

OK, time to fess up… As a kid, a big chunk of my entertainment came from comics and among my favourites were Superman, Batman, The Phantom, The Flash, Spider-Man and Iron Man. Occasional reading of a friend’s Captain America comic was as close as I came to being a fan…
The way they handled the Captain’s acquisition of his cornball costume and shield, was inspired…
The filmmaker’s have done such an excellent job of turning this mildly skeptical viewer into a fan of Captain America, that I’ll even give…
iRate:: 4 out of 5.
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The Sunday Screening Session…..
Iron Man 2 (2010)
:: Posted 12 May 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

From the outset, the thundering notes of AC/DC, telegraph that this is going to a fun ride…
…take a look at Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) with all his metal fangs and tell me that’s not an homage to Jaws (Richard Kiel) from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)…
I would have been happier with a lot more Vanko destructo and less of the storm of clashing and crashing metal bots at the end…
…a literate and fun addition to the super-hero genre…
iRate:: 3½ out of 5.
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The Sunday Screening Session…..
Gallipoli (1981)
:: Posted 28 April 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

Since I last saw this movie many years ago, I’d forgotten that it starts out as a boy’s own adventure featuring a very young, very Australian and not so weird Mel Gibson…
The outback scenes that open the film are spectacularly shot with the heat, dust and desolation radiating off the screen…
The final freeze-frame… had me uncomfortably riveted to my seat with tears streaming, the first time round. Seeing it again, all these years later had exactly the same impact…
iRate:: 4½ out of 5.
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The Sunday Screening Session…..
No Country For Old Men (2007)
:: Posted 21 April 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

Universally praised and hailed as a filmmakers masterpiece, this movie also attracted an avalanche of awards. Joel and Ethan Coen share the record of four Oscar nominations for the same film with…
When Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles on a bloody crime scene, a pickup truck loaded with heroin, and two million dollars in irresistible cash, his decision to take the money sets off an unstoppable chain reaction of violence…
I’m embarrassed that it has taken me this long to see this movie… I think I can now appreciate the virtuosity of its construction… It’s a filmmakers tour de force…
iRate:: 4½ out of 5.
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The Sunday Screening Session…..
Apocalypse Now (1979)
:: Posted 14 April 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

With the death of famed Chicago Sun-Times critic, Roger Ebert (see my earlier Ebert post), I thought I’d have a look at one of his and my top 10 movies, Apocalypse Now. I recently obtained the 3 disc Full Disclosure Blu-ray Edition which includes the movie tragics must-have Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the 1991 documentary….
Francis Ford Coppola adapted the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness (set in the Belgian Congo, Africa) to depict the Vietnam War as a descent into primal madness….
…this new Blu-ray package with its incomparable set of extras, has enhanced my impression of the films. So hats off to the guys who took such care putting this together…
iRate:: 5 out of 5 (One of my top 10).
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The Dean of Movie Critics, Roger Ebert is Dead:
:: Posted 5 April 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

For movie lovers the world over, today is a very sad day. The most famous of all film critics, Roger Ebert, has died aged 70 after a long battle with cancer.

In 1967 he joined the Chicago Sun-Times as their film critic and had worked continuously since (with a short break in 2006/7 for cancer treatment). He gained a formidable reputation and was the first critic awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his work…
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The Sunday Screening Session…..
Star Wars: Episode VI – Return Of The Jedi (1983)
:: Posted 31 March 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

This week’s selection was a no-brainer, as a happy coincidence of events made the choice very easy. Today is the 30th birthday of all-round-good-bloke and son in law, Morgan, who shares a birthday with the final chapter of one of his favourite film franchises, Star Wars: Episode VI – Return Of The Jedi….
In the epic conclusion of the saga, the Empire prepares to crush the Rebellion with a more powerful Death Star…
…this was the first time I’d watched Jedi in isolation and also in glorious 1080p HD. How would the movie stand up without its usual crutches, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back…
The Blu-ray DTS sound track is stonkingly brilliant and that’s with no ifs, buts or maybes… this has been a wholly satisfying return to one of my favourite movie sagas and one I’m really looking forward to completing…
iRate:: 4½ out of 5.
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The Sunday Screening Session…..
Platoon (1986)
:: Posted 24 March 2013, by zakback ::

After a very brief introduction and without fanfare or warning, the audience descends into an impenetrable jungle. The camera at eye level draws us into a patrol alongside… Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), who is confronted by the claustrophobic thick lush brush, with rough fronds brushing and irritating his fresh face… “Somebody once wrote: ‘Hell is the impossibility of reason.’ That’s what this place feels like: Hell.” So says the bewildered Taylor…
Where Apocalypse Now is epic in its bombast and artifice, Platoon is intimate but a lot more confronting…
Francois Truffaut is often quoted as saying, “There is no such thing as an anti-war film”… I think Platoon goes a long way towards refuting Truffaut…
iRate:: 4½ out of 5.
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The Sunday Screening Session…..
How the West Was Won (1962)
:: Posted 17 March 2013, by zakback ::

How the West Was Won (1962) is a curiosity in that it was one of only two narrative films produced using the Cinerama three lens camera system…
For this epic western, three legendary directors, Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall, were employed to shoot different segments of the stories of three generations of the Prescott family… The film chronicles the family’s triumphs and tragedies as they encounter river pirates, suffer drownings and make and lose a fortune…
Films like How the West Was Won and Ford’s other western masterpiece, The Searchers (1956), have languished in VHS hell for too long… This result is a riveting revelation and richly recommended.
iRate:: 4 out of 5.
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Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012 HBO) – A film about child sexual abuse that everyone should see.
:: Posted 07 March 2013, by zakback ::
Just got through watching the award-winning HBO documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, looking at sexual abuse of children. The film examines the abuse of power in the Catholic Church system via the story of four men who fought to expose the priest, Father Lawrence Murphy who abused them during the mid 1960s…
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My Favourite Directors:
:: Posted 20 March 2013, by zakback ::
Who are my favourite directors?
For me, the first is Kubrick… I’m in awe of his body of work. I’ve seen 11 of his 12 features, and three of them I revisit every couple of years: Barry Lyndon (1975, a sublimely beautifully framed, clinical and evenly paced wonder…
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