Point Blank - Film Review
June 22nd, 2008 by Robert
The period around the late 60’s and early 70’s was something of a golden age for crime films. There was something about the sterile light and the grainy film largely in use, along with a prevailing tendency to present stark stories with hard-edged anti-heroes - even the Westerns of the period adopted the flavour. And among crime films of the period, none stands out more than John Boorman’s seminal masterpiece, Point Blank. Read the rest of this entry »
The fourth volume of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles is quite a departure from the last instalment. Unlike The Queen of the Damned, which became an aimless mass of multiple plot strands and apocalyptic excess, The Tale of the Body Thief re-establishes a sense of intimacy with the series’ most interesting character, and its natural star, Lestat de Lioncourt. 
Watching The Darjeeling Limited is a little bit like looking at a fish tank. There’s a lot of colour. Everything is sharply defined and beautifully presented in its place. If you watch the fish for long enough, you start to get a feel for how they act and react to different things. But ultimately, it’s a pretty alien world that you can enjoy from the outside but not fully empathise with. 
The latest film from Quentin Tarantino is a clear case of style over substance. But it struck me as I was watching: I don’t think he needs any substance. His style packs such a punch that even a piece of self-indulgence like Death Proof manages to provide a pretty satisfactory couple of hours of entertainment. 
You can just imagine the pitch to the producers: “It’s Godzilla meets the Blair Witch Project!” Yep, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty silly, but there’s a lot to like about this modern take on the old giant monster movie format. 
Alastair Reynolds thinks big. Really big. In Redemption Ark, the sequel to his brilliant debut novel Revelation Space, nothing less than the survival of humankind is at stake. The genius of Reynolds is his ability to paint his picture on such a grand canvas and still make the story comprehensible to the average, cosmologically-challenged reader. 
We see the stories on the news every day. Criminal proceedings against accused 911 masterminds. Carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes the terrorists even get through the stricter security arrangements restricting all our lives and manage to kill a few innocent civilians. But how do we really fight this war? Gerald Seymour’s The Unknown Soldier shows us how it all works from a variety of angles, and it’s a far cry from James Bond or Steven Seagal. It’s not glamorous. Sometimes it’s downright sordid.