Bugger it. You beat me to the Garden State review… I was literally about to sit down and write one, but decided to check your site first. Damnit. Now it’ll just look like plagiarising. I concur with everything you said… it was a brilliant film, worth 9/10. And I have Natalie Portman on my desktop :P

Kind of made me rethink my whole real-life Natalie situation in light of Zach’s decision at the end of GS. Which was the exact opposite of what I did. Hmmm.

national treasure: nil points. well maybe one for the cute comedy sidekick. utterly unbelievable drivel. i will never forgive you.

Couldn’t agree more about National Treasure. What a dissapointment. Dan Brown must be over-joyed that “The Da Vinci Code” will look like a rip off once it comes out. I bet you the script for NT was written after the da vinci code.

I have the first few Lemony Snicket books if you wish to borrow them…

I take it we can look forward to a review of Closer fairly soon.

Garden State was fantastic until the retarded ending. No respecting writer should ever have to crib from the ‘Friends’ finale.

Speaking of John Malkovich, did anyone else have fun closing thier eyes and listening to his best mate who sounds almost EXACTLY like him?

Well- you’re missing out, then.

Did you really go and see five films at the cinema in December?

The books are good, although I have to admit I found the style they’re written in slightly annoying at times, but I guess they are for kids after all. Bearing in mind it takes less than an hour to read each of them, you’re probably better off just borrowing them.

How interesting, i thought garden state to be so unbelievably over-rated. he got all the nice shots out of the way in the first half hour and then became incredibly pedestrian for the remaining 60 minutes with some truly awful editing. At times i felt the script really was forgetting that a film is also about the pictures too and how they make you feel. The shout into the abyss? Lame. Natalie Portman doing the whole ‘be unique’ thing just annoyed me, I really think you can be portrayed as unique better than just having your character shout something stupid. The scene where the friend gives him the necklace meant absolutely nothing, it wasn’t set up, it made no sense and came from nowhere so I had no emotional attachment to it. At times I felt he was just filling in the blanks in his script.

However, I did like a couple of the tracks and despite being really negative on it, I admire the fact that he got the film made however I think if he hadn’t been TV’s Zach Braff he’d never have got the money.

But as much as I didn’t like Garden State, I couldn’t stand Napoleon Dynamite.

You want to see the standout film of the year though? Rent “The Station Agent” - that’s an example of an actor writing a truly superlative film, casting it perfectly, filming beautifully and editing with real understanding of the language of film. Things I think Zack Braff really forgot about.

Just my opinion of course.

This would explain why you haven’t updated for such a long time.

I thought the new Bridget Jones film was poor, although I haven’t (and wouldn’t) read the book. But surely she is meant to look as though she doesn’t like being fat? Or why would she diet?

I agree with heppy on the ‘unique’ thing- that bugged me. But the shout into the abyss was appropriate to the moment- the guy had not felt any emotion in 20 years- that was the least he could do.

The necklace thing was set up when he saw his friend robbing the grave.

Thanks for that. I really must see Garden State now. I take it you’ll be there when Closer opens on 14th Jan then? As Empire put it, “they had us at Natalie Portman as a stripper” :)

Yes, the shout into the abyss was releasing emotion, I just think it could have been done on a far less obvious level. Surely the falling in love element of the piece is a much more emotional and worthwhile activity than just shouting?

The grave robbing is only relevant if you think that he’d stolen the necklace from Large’s dead mother and then sold it on except we don’t know that and the massive ‘journey of discovery’ in finding it just didn’t scan for me. It felt like a waste of time.

Plus, I didn’t really feel any connection to the point of the necklace, we’d never heard of it before, or seen it or realised it was particularly significant, we’re just told it is. Whereas in a truly great film like “It’s a Wonderful Life” when you realise that Clarence has finally got his wings you can’t help but be involved in the story. Perhaps it was the necklace his mother wore when she did one particular nice thing that he’s remembered as the last real emotion he had. That would have made it a worthwhile piece of drama, as it is, it was just, “oh, here’s a necklace I got some guy to find”.

Seriously though…. The Station Agent :)

I was pretty sure the look Large gave his friend when he saw him robbing the grave was meant to convey: “Holy shit: Did you rob my mother’s grave?” That’s certainly what I got from it.

If they’d had a corny setup scene where he’d been like: “And as my mother’s head dashed on the corner of the bench, I saw her necklace fly into the air.” it would have been totally obvious what they were going to get. Kind of like…..It’s a Wonderful Life!

I think not foreshadowing every single thing that’s going to happen to a character is a good thing.

The movie had flaws, some big ones, but the objective of the journey wasn’t the point. The journey was the point. Large’s anger at getting dragged all over the place was the real gift.

but they didn’t have any story about the necklace at all which is why it made no sense. it turned up in the dying moments of the film.

I agree that not foreshadowing everything is a good thing, but bearing in mind Large and the gravedigger were supposed to be really good friends, do you think he’d rob a grave in front of his friend who’s mother he’d buried two days previously? It’s basically bad writing and I think that’s why I’m against the film. It just plodded along and everything that happened was no surprise because there was never a moment where a character revealed anything that shocking. Even when watching the graverobbing bit I just didn’t care.

I think I probably reacted against the hype of the film and everyone saying how great it was when it reality it was just a nice film that could have been a hell of a lot better with more thought in the script, plot and direction. So really, I feel let down by the piece the same way that so many people rave about Napoleon Dynamite because it’s a ‘art house film’ it’s not, it’s a bunch of film school graduates putting together an average at best film and convinving people it’s more than it was.

I thought the same about Blair Witch too, but I am , sometimes, a hard to please film watcher.

We saw Garden State and Closer (must have been a preview) on Sunday. Garden State was fantastic and I totally agree with your rating. In contrast, Closer was poor. Probably stands up well on its own but not straight after a 9/10. Didn’t really connect with any of the characters (possibly Clive Owen’s Larry), so that didn’t help. Worth a look for Portman anyway.