Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

April 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 73

Total Comments: 32

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The Proposition / Australia / UK / 2005

An unremittingly ugly film,in which every character is at some point covered with blood, filth, sweat, and flies. Written by Nick Cave, with the same style and themes that mark his album, Murder Ballads, this Aussie horse opera doesn’t so much present an exotic, bizarro version of the Wild West as the apotheosis of it: an unforgiving landscape, a new frontier of criminality and libidinous appetites, and a politics of submission and civilization (especially of the “wild” aboriginal peoples). Flavorsome ambience indeed, but the film doesn’t quite come through on its promises. The film’s resolution and the fates of its characters should be apparent from the beginning, and the evil Burns brothers (played by hairy, brown-toothed Guy Pearce and Danny Huston) never truly reveal themselves as the brutal bastards they are rumored to be as perpetrators of “the Hopkins Outrage.” Still, the screenplay constructs at least one utterly fascinating character, which in turn allows Ray Winstone to deliver a career-high performance as a conflicted, portly lawman determined to civilize the savages and protect his wife from all the rape and blood-and-brain-spilling around them.

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: First Look 35mm Print
29 Apr 2006 7:15 PM | Submit Comment

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