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Reviews
eXistenZ (1999)
XML nesting problem
Possible spoiler; gives away the shape of the plot
At the start of this film I was all fired up about the icky, squidgy special effects and the idea of playing with levels of reality.
By halfway through I was giggling at the icky, squidgy special effects and getting fed up with the paucity of the game-within-the-film. I've had far more fun watching my housemate play Tomb Raider. Somehow, this one just didn't engage my interest.
By the end of the film I was still giggling, but had had enough. "Are we or aren't we?" endings get on my nerves. I spend my working life keeping XML and HTML well-formed, so running the compiler and placing the missing tag (so to speak) was just one more piece of debugging.
A good laugh if you've had enough beer not to think too hard.
Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence (1998)
Sweet and playful
This is a sweet, charming romantic comedy with a playfully self-referential plot knitted together in flashbacks from different characters' points of view: David Lodge's 'Small World' meets Hal Hartley's 'Flirt'.
A woman comes to London to start a new life, and bumps into three very different men who all fall for her. She doesn't know that they're friends; they don't know that she's met all of them. She thinks she's lost the one she's fallen head-over-heels in love with, he thinks he's lost her. But we know that it'll all come out right in the end, because it's that kind of film.
Furthermore it has Joseph Fiennes looking soulful, and Rufus Sewell in a part he wanted "because I got to smoke cigarettes and say 'f*ck!' a lot". Definitely one for a girls' night in.
Tous les matins du monde (1991)
Beautiful and heart-rending
See this and weep. Then weep some more (take tissues). Then listen to the soundtrack and weep along to beautifully-reproduced baroque chamber music.
The story is slow-paced and lovingly-shot, and deals with love, talent and labour being lost on the road to fame and fortune in the big city. Even in the seventeenth century, musicians sold out and left emotional wreckage behind them. (Not to mention one dramatically smashed viol, a suicide and a lot of crushed peaches.)
Though the film's big-name stars are the Depardieus pere et fils, the musical director, Jordi Savall, and the Concert des Nations should be given an equal billing!