http://imdb.com/title/tt0085862/ The 'Mad Dog' Criminal...The 'Lone Wolf' Lawman...The Ultimate Showdown. how would you like to bite that ass, develop lockjaw, and be dragged to death? carrera is carradine's girlfriend carradine fights dirty and smokes cigarilloes between rounds meets carrera premature ejaculation playing in the mud with the hose cleaning up straightening up friends getting shot turning to drink cleaning up again masterful ability to mask any and all emotions baddies shot his dog then shot his window he punches the ground/thought he was gonna perform CPR on the dog cleaning up again with a beer in his hand hooks up with the surviving cop and driving all over the dessert looking for god knows what? FBI 1"who the hell does that son of a bitch think he is?" FBI 2"that son of a bitch knows this country side better than you know the warts on your wife's ass" FBI 1 "well why don't we all just line up and kiss.his.ass" extras running pointing cycling chuck sweating ultimate humiliation.. carradine takes norris' badge "something to remember you by" before burying chuck's truck in a big hole with chuck alive in the drivers seat. but wait, it's okay, they left the windows up so even though he's buried alive, he has oxygen and.. hey.. A BEER!! he seems to have a real drinking problem tho as he pours the beer over hiself instead of drinking it he starts his truck under all that earth and drives his way to freedom! what a legend! he's a bit beat up but at least he's feeling well enough to drink the beer he's offered as he recovers from his busy night he's not happy though because he's a bit damaged and jump side kicks his porch over in frustration of not being able to shot his gun (metaphor by the way he's mooning over a photo of Carrera as he lies on his bed) did i mention the midget? he's not a short person or a dwarf, he's a midget, an evil little suit-wearing/video game playing midget in a wheelchair. but now Chuck gets really mad when he finds out that the baddies have taken little Sally, his fiesty teenage daughter. they're probably deflowering her as we speak! so off to Meh-heh-cho he goes to get his baby back. Chuck is so kind as to give a service station begger coins while girls put flowers on his truck and he's touched by the gesture but you wouldn't know that just by looking at him or anything. inside the service station is FBI agent 2, yeh, the good one, who seems to have survived the shootout earlier afterall. they take an inventory of their weaponry to find it includes a crossbow. what luck? more luck arrives in the form of the limping deputy who's surviving all the gun play nicely so far thankyou. so in scenes and wardrobe reminescent of vietnam movies, chuck finds the baddies hidout and scopes the security with his binocular. The fully train crossbowing FBI agent takes out said security and the rescuers move in close enough to see a braless carrera bring food across the compound to Little Sally. Chuck and his bandana make it into his daughter and Carrera and takes time to have a wee pash in front of his daughter who may well be quite grossed out by her dad kissing some braless chick in meh heh cho. then all hell breaks loose - every stunt and weapon in the book.. limping deputy seems to have found himself a rocket launcher and cliches meh heh chan mission explosionaries fill the air with dust and noise. david carradine seems particularly gleeful working the machinegun atop the hasienda - being one of those baddie bosses who would never ask anyone to do anything they wouldn't do themselves. but chuck finds someone has left the keys in the bulldozer so seizes the opportunity just as carridine fines a hummer or tank or some other big fuck off truck and they go at it, head to head, like a cheap version of Sigorney vs Alien. but wait.. really.. all we really want is for Karate vs Kung Fu, don't we? are they ever going to fight hand to hand, chop to chop? put down your gun chuck, put down your machine gun carradine, fight it out like the martial artists you are. Chuck flips the extra large belt buckle and his weaponry drops to the ground carradine kung fus up while wearing a golf sweater vincent price's organ soundtrack strats up and it's all on Kung fu kicks almost all the shit out of Karate with a few dirty tricks to help along the way Little Sally tries to help but gets a swift backhand from kung fu and really finally pisses chuck off enough to let loose not many round house kicks (if any) but more animated facial features than teh whole movie to date kungfu cheats with the machine gun but carrera takes one for the team as all good girl friends of brave me do she dies in chucks arms with a death bed confession of how she loves him how can chuck lose so much his friend his dog his girl but it ends well as he leaves the midget in a red faced rage to an adoring public to live happily ever after with his perky daughter and barely any memory of his hot girlfriend or his dead dawg and seems to have reconciled wiht his exwife this movie has everything it's well worth a look.

I admit, I wasn't chomping at the bit to see the sequel to Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, but given the lineup at the cinema at the moment, it was the best of sad offerings. Being the first Saturday screening in it's launch week, front row tickets were all that were available and, to tell the truth, if I'd been within cooey of the person buying my tickets I would've said "Let's do something else." but I wasn't so ended up underneath the massive screen at Berkley's hidious Botany complex. Okay, so it's not so hidious once you're inside a theatre (except that there's not a single cinema there where you can't hear the movie next door and the seats make you sit so your boobs stick out a bit far - that's the lumbar in the seat? that does that? or maybe I have an unconscious habit of forcing my chest front and centre given half a chance) but the foyer and ticket-buying experience of the place is one user-unfriendly pain in the butt. And don't go thinking how nice those Moritz icecream cones with the drizzly syrup and the fancy waffle cones might be, because the amount of time you'll need to hang around the counter while some unco-ordinated Pakuranga high school student wearing latex gloves (they don't look hygenic) tries to roll the perfect icecream scoop in the most inefficient way possible, means even though you thought you were in time for the movie, you'll end up missing the first five minutes (that's even taking into account the pre-movie onscreen SPAM) More high school students, ushers this time, on guard outside and inside the theatre policing the allocated seated session - as if anyone was gonna steal our seats. "Close enough?" I asked, staring up at the blank screen from our seats. The theatre was filling with the Eastern Suburbs brightest and finest. "You'll get used to the angle, just as soon as the movie starts." Yeh, right: looking up the nostrils of a fifty foot high Johnny Depp is exactly how I saw my night unfolding. The old (no) style adverts for local jewellers, quality panelbeaters and the local Indian restaurant flickered one after the other on the screen "You know, if this was the Rialto, the movie would've started by now because when the Rialto says a movie starts at 8:15pm the movie bloody well starts at 8:15!" yeh yeh we know but this trend to show 20 minutes of poorly crafted adverts and television promos is just a bad idea all around. I mean, come *on* - do I really need to see a Shortland Street trailer at the cinema? The world is going to Hell in a handbasket, I tells ya! (yells at some of the teenagers in the theatre to put their cardies on cos it's cold) (okay I didn't do that but I'm beginning to feel like a cranky old lady in a crazy world she can't understand) (actually the kids/audience were pretty good - no girls yabbering, no cell phones hearlding text messages, no continous cellophane rustling - it was a good crowd! I didn't have to growl anyone.) Finally, the lights dim and the movie starts. I'm sure I must've blogged about the original Pirates, and I have no doubt I enjoyed it - I remember it being a rollocking good time. Rollocking. I slouched in my seat to try and get a good angle to view the towering sequel, and waited for my second rollocking. Now, I really only have one word to describe this movie. Lumbering. The damn thing is like a big old sailing ship in open sea, hefting up over the swells, crashing down into the water with the deep thud of sea on hull - but not in a good way. While the special effects of Davy Jones (not the Monkee) and his crew was really great and clever, it wasn't enough to keep my interest for long. The movie just lumbered on.. and on.. and on.. and on. I became so disinterested in the film that I actually stopped watching it, turned around and watched all the people illuminated by the light from the screen watch the movie. I wanted to leave. I wondered what was on television. Thought about washing the nets in the lounge windows because they were looking a little grubby. My bum got restless. My legs kept stretching out. I fidgeted so much I was away of my fidgeting - are my arms usually need this much scratching? I watched along the row I was sitting in at all the people sitting on the floor, watching the movie while lying down. Considered it myself, decided not to cos I'd just then be lying down not enjoying the movie and lord only knows how dirty that floor'd be. By the time the movie finally finished and the credits started to roll, I was up out of my seat with a "C'mon c'mon, let's go." Wondering why anyone'd want to read the credits or stay for any crazy monkey antics at the end of this particular waste-of-time. I didn't care, it even had a giant squid (a Kraken) thing AND pirates and I still didn't care. I wish I'd had the nouse to get up after 20 minutes and go ask for my money back. Don't see this movie.

Somersault and Look Both Ways are debut feature films for their directors - Cate Shortland (short film maker) and Sara Watt (animator) respectively. Both set in extreme weather conditions - Somersault in the bleak cold change of season near a ski resort; No Way Out set over a scorching hot weekend in Adelaide. Two Australian movies that are similar in many ways but each leaving me feeling completely different afterwards. Somersault follows 16 year old Heidi as she makes that subtle shift between child and adult. Her life lacks the intimacy she craves as she confuses sex with love with the exquisite bad judgement of youth. She leaves her home after one such incident, and takes the bus to a ski resort arriving at the wrong end of the ski season believing a past encounters promise of contact if she's ever in the area. Of course, he doesn't remember her let alone want to hear from her, so she looks for a place to sleep by letting a tourist take her back to his accommodation. This is her method of operation - sexual encounters for warmth and attention and shelter. She is intensely alone. It's all she seems to know, and we know how self destructive that road will be if she continues down it. Then she meets Joe, the son of a local farmer. He seems to be as closed off and confused as Heidi appears naive and fragile. She is childlike, and he is confused. She finds a job, makes friends, meets people - tentative, fragile, but a semblance of a "normal" life seems to fill the space she occupies, though her transluscent innocence never leaves her. "I'm fucking the girl from the servo." "she's not like a close friend or anything, we're sleeping together." "you know when you were a kid, did your mum ever used to spray perfume in the air then sort of walk through it? ... yeh, well she's like that. you see, when you leave, you can still feel her on your skin." Things catch up with Heidi though, her self destructive tendencies resurface when she realises Joe is uncomfortable with her meeting his friends and begins to pull away from her again. This is the catalyst for her to make that subtle move to stop playing at grownups. She reaches out, finally, and finds a little help goes a long way. She left me feeling like it's not going to be easy but I could see the woman in the girl and am slightly hopeful. Slightly. I spent the whole movie worried about Heidi. She was bloody lucky not to fall into any real danger, or have any of those situations turn really bad. In fact, a lot of women could probably say that about the same time in our lives. There's a very fine line between being safe and not safe in sexually charged situations. The woman next to me in the theatre expected more trouble for Heidi in her situations, if the frights and gasps she annoyed me with were anything to go by. Somersault left me feeling low. Although it had a dreamlike quality, like old photographs or memories - it's reality hit home. Sadness and worry are the feelings I've been left with. Look Both Ways is one of the best films I've ever seen. It is familiar, and beautiful - I loved it right from the beginning with the flashes of illustrative imaginings and I want to go see it again right now. Time spent in this movie is joyful. Insanely ordinary and familiar. We meet, and spend a weekend with Nick, and those whose lives intersect his. Lives change this hot weekend. "What are you talking about death for? it's not like the good old days when you just ignored the whole concept of it." The characters were all so familiar. Slivers of people I recognised and situations I felt familiarity with. I noticed the way Nick was uncomfortable and didn't know where to place himself that whole weekend after being told he had cancer on Friday, when his work previous to his diagnosis showed him to be a self-assured and confident photo journalist. The way Nick's news changes his Editors outlook on life and we see that shift of priority in the love on his face as he watches his wife and daughter blow out birthday candles. Just a couple of the many fantastic performances from the cast in this movie. The word "familiar" echoes again and again. Even in the furnishings - stains on the wall paper, black and white photos from the 50s on the walls, oak dressing tables, low quality 40s style sofas worn on the arm rests, old crownlynn teacups - just like every home somewhere. It doesn't feel staged or prepared - Meryl's room, for instance, looked like she'd lived in it for years - layers of images pinned to the walls, traces of her everywhere she even had colour on the telephone from picking it up with wet paint on her hands from a hundred previous phone calls. The soft, casual - not hilarious, this is no Murial's Wedding or The Castle - funny parts of ordinary people living ordinary lives and having extraordinary everyday things happen to them. Meryl's friend, upon seeing Nick's photo of the train victim's wife on the front page of the paper noting first, how sad that was then "She's got really nice hair." so typical of friend conversations. "How was home? Did you meet any nice men?" "It was my dad's funeral." It's a movie about beginnings. endings. meetings, finishings, picking ups, dumpings, losings, gainings - all the things that happen to us all the time. Everything never changes. This is life. "You're giving me the flick, aren't you?... I met you on friday, we slept together on Saturday, you took me to meet your mother on Sunday and then you can't start anything. That's the tightest little relationship I've ever had." I wanted to scoop the movie up carefully in my own two hands and keep it for myself. There're things that could be written about the slice of generations in Look Both Ways and the train metaphor and the convergence of people and the continuence of spirit and of life and of community and of connectivity but the movie did it all so brilliantly that I say, go see for yourself. I came away from this movie full of joy, and hope, and glee and warmth.