...what with the French Open I've got way behind on this and I have a big batch to slap my way through as well as 3 new films in the cinema to talk about ... and I'm getting up at 8.30am to go and watch the tennis again at the Priory Club in Edgbaston (went on monday, going tomorrow, may do an entry on it if I can be arsed) so I'll keep this as brief as.

Right then, I saw Samson and Delilah when it was on sky because Hedy Lamarr in the lead role (Delilah, not Samson ) intrigued me. Very little to do with the actual bible story, but was watchable nonetheless. Costumes probably looked a bit too "new" but director Cecil B. DeMille (for whom the tag "legendary" is if anything an understatement) could do this sort of thing in his sleep. My brother is into war films and he's even moved into renting foreign ones from lovefilm and threw a very obscure Russian one my way, The Star. Very well made film about a recon team working to sabotage and gain information from behind enemy lines. A romantic subplot is very weak and tacked on, but the nuts and bolts of the story and the way its told is extremely compelling. Beyond obscure, but well worth unearthing.

To show just how random my viewing is (I am probably the only person on earth who has gone from watching Tarkovsky to the remake of My Sassy Girl ) after that I caught 27 Dresses when it was on its run on Sky Premiere. This surprised me by not being bad, I don't care for Katharine Heigl (don't watch Grey's Anatomy, not a fan of Knocked Up), but she wasn't too annoying here. Obvious set up, but some genuinely amusing moments thrown in quite frequently. Judy Greer absolutely stole the show as the best friend taking a nothing role with dodgy lines and making it the best part of the film. After that I saw The Home Song Stories, which was very reminiscent in tone to Romulus, My Father which was also an ode to miserablism. Joan Chen is good for the most part, but the story occasionally veers into over the top territory and gets a bit obvious. More than decent but not quite as good as it could have been.

The Fall

Now, The Fall certainly had "love/hate" written all over it, being directed by Tarsem Singh. He's a director (he made The Cell with Jennifer Lopez) for whom something as unimportant and measly as plot is never going to get in the way of his visuals and it's the same here. It has early-Hollywood stuntman Lee Pace telling a little girl tall tales in order to elicit morphine from her, as such the fantasy storyline/elements have very little depth to them. It does drag to begin with in the non-fantasy sections, but strangely by the end the part about the "telling" is more interesting than the "story". It's okay, with one incredibly acted scene, but it's all over the place and as deep as a puddle.

Two more and I'm on to the cinema entries, super. I watched Reign Over Me because it was on and I was bored and I liked Mike Binder's previous effort The Upside of Anger a great deal. This film just proves Adam Sandler can't hack it as a dramatic actor (the only things I liked about Punch Drunk Love were Phil Hoffman, Emily Watson and the kiss). Don Cheadle pwns him every which way til sunday for the entirity of the runtime and you know a film's in trouble when Saffron Burrows gives the second best performance. Shamelessly manipulative, borderline exploitative, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't moving. Lastly the best film of the lot: Alexis Zorbas. A divine performance by Anthony Quinn as the eponymous character, he's note perfect, a decent turn by Alan Bates and some interesting supporting turns from Lila Kedrova (deserved the oscar) and Irene Papas (underused). Very good film, but I will never, ever forgive Mihalis Kakogiannis for what he did to Papas's character.