FILLMORE DISCOS 20

Brief-ish update.

Ip Man (***)
rather enjoyable kung fu romp based on a true story of Yip Man, who would eventually become teacher to Bruce Lee

Frost/Nixon (**)
how about calling it 'Partridge/Brezhnev'? was anyone else as distracted by Langella's uncanny resemblance to Leonid Brezhnev (bizarrely matched with an Ian Paisley accent), and Sheen's spot-on Alan Partridge impersonation? overall, not a bad retelling of the events, such as they're worth retelling (which is debatable)

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (**)
a hypnotic dreamy epic adventure through time that is an unquestionable technical marvel and testament to what Hollywood is capable of - the first 45 minutes or so are excellent up to the section in Murmansk featuring the captivating Tilda Swinton, whose performance for me is the movie's highlight; disappointingly, from then on, the film's underlying bland superficiality really comes to the fore, second-rate Forrest Gumpesque platitudes coming so thick and fast that an anaemic, soulless, miscast Brad Pitt saying 'life is a box of chocolates' would not come as more than a weary footnote; the constant flash-forwards are utterly unnecessary and distracting, and the film just doesn't have enough real substance to justify its 3 long hours; Tarsem Singh's vastly superior The Fall (2008) blows this away

The Wrestler (**)
if The Wrestler functions as allegory for the tragic career of the phenomenon that is Mickey Rourke, a man who once had the looks and talent for the keys to the kingdom, then okay - but really I'm not fooled by its gritty fly-on-the-wall stylising and 80s hair metal OST, that both act as a mask for its mawkish overweening sentimentality (the cringeworthy relationships with his estranged daughter and the lapdancer with a heart of gold left me reaching for a sick bag) - the film's as phoney and unsubtle a piece of drama as any Wrestlemania bout