Movie Madness!

Me and the Missus have a week off work and, as the Boy is in the middle of his exams, we’re not going away. So we’ve decided to glut ourselves on movies and do other cultural stuff so here’s what we’ve seen so far:

Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End
The first film was smart, had a good villain in Geoffrey Rush and let Johnny Depp steal the show with his comedy pirate turn. Even the second one, while not as good as the first, had many good moments. But the third instalment of this shiver-me-timbers saga is shockingly bad. It has no coherent plot or character development, it’s about 45 minutes too long and it relies on a tidal wave of CGI to cover up its tsunami of deficiencies. The projector cocked up ten minutes from the end at the cinema we saw it at and I wasn’t actually all that bothered if it started working again.

The Prestige
A really smart mystery thriller with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Michael Caine about two rival magicians who are determined to outdo one another. Throw in a murder, some excellent performances and several plot twists and it’s an utter winner. It’s so good even a cameo from David Bowie can’t ruin it!

Jindabyne
Directed by Ray Lawrence, the same fella who did the superb thriller Lantana, this Aussie drama focuses on a group of four friends who discover the dead body of a murdered Aboriginal girl while on a fishing trip and, bizarrely, decide to carry on fishing rather than immediately report their find. The film follows the fallout from this decision and how the quartet deal with the reactions of their own families and the wider community when this secret breaks. A bit of a slow burner but a worthwhile and fascinating piece of film-makming. Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney are excellent as the marrieds struggling to come to terms with the fisherman husband’s behaviour.