Now for some, spending 6 hours in the dark confines of a cinema, whatever the quality of the film may seem a bit much. Let me assure you, it is. However I also contend too much of a good thing can be great. Also, seeing so many films in a day is also an expert exercise in efficiency for me a movie fan, who is also burdened with such tasks as work and speaking with people during the week. First off, 11.40, sandwich from Centra in hand, I settled in for ‘Gomorrah’. The film catalogues the lives of those entwined with organised crime in Naples, Italy. The film uses a hand held style, offering an authentic intimacy with an almost documentary style, as we follow various characters and families through their lives in Naples, their histories and fates riddled with implications of the far reaching power yielded by the Camorra, the crime unit at the story’s centre. The film expertly intertwines various struggling consciences, naive minds and merciless actions, the naturally lit urban decay of Naples and various bleakly hued locations providing a mood setting background. The film impacts sporadically, sometimes I think when watching and not feeling the emotion of a movie such as this that has received such plaudits that maybe I have become desensitised to film watching I do it so prolifically. Importantly though, I have to say that I think critics are only too happy to apply layers of saliva to the asses of movies that come from outside the Hollywood system, achieving what we might take for granted in any half way decent crime family drama from the US. What I want to put across, is that the movie doesn’t break the necessary mould to earn the classic status some are according it, while also encouraging you to consider it, the movie deserving an audience and an appreciation of its subtle, engrossing story.

Timing was on my side and I could slip within mere minutes into ‘Burn After Reading’ the latest fromthe Cohen Brothers. A million miles away from the depth of ‘No Country for Old Men’ this movie is pointedly a farce, a screwball comedy with its big name cast on top form. Your mindset going into this movie is important - not that I would want to relay the plot, but if I did it would be nigh on impossible and this is of course the purpose of the movie and admitted to. What I found though, and maybe I was slow on the uptake, was that this admission came late in the day and I had spent close to 90 minutes appreciating the humour and development of the story in dribs and drabs waiting for the story to gel or take on the cunning wit I associate with the Cohens, when in fact the non sensical developments were purely what they were serving for my enjoyment. It has has a polished look, not as day-glo as ‘Intolerable Cruelty’, the idiocy of ‘O Brother’ and caper approach to plotting of ‘Lebwoski’ - most importantly, traces of ‘Blood Simple’ come through in the dismembered story line. On reflection , a very enjoyable movie.

Last of the cinema line ups was ‘Eagle Eye’, preceeded by a toasted Chicken Philly sandwich in Soco Cafe on Capel Street - plugged for being one of my most reliable places for lunch. I have to honest to god say when I saw two boys run into their village in no name Middle East in the opening scene of this movie I had an unsettling feeling on disaster approaching. How right I was. This movie makes all the sense of a box of dizzy kittens. Shia Le Beouf for some reason has a movie career, the brief moment of neurotic charm that I appreciated in ‘Transformers’ has long passed its sell by date, some might say its bordering on rancid. Every plot point, development, and suggestion of serious threat is laughable - there is never a tense moment and if Le Beouf stars in one more movie where there is a suggestion of Hitchcock-lite everyman thriller I will be on the next plane to the US to punch him and Spielberg. The final section of the movie, when the ‘big bad’ is revealed is identifiable a mile off, and is so insultingly idiotic I kept waiting for Steven Seagal to turn up or spot ‘Movie Making for Idiots’ in the corner of a scene. All I could think of was the scene in ‘Galaxy Quest’ where Sigourney Weavers characters moans disbelievingly at why people set up such pointlessly complicated ways of getting to disable ‘the something or other than needs to be disabled’ to save the day.

Interestingly, or not, people walked out of all 3 movies!

‘Gomorrah’, For the serious themed, well made, purposeful rather than entertaining set. 

‘Burn After Reading’, laugh out loud, wit and eccentric characters, Cohen brothers super-charged bizzareness.

‘Eagle Eye’, Shia LeBouf encroaching on Adam Sandler territory for sheer annoyance, a ludicrously idiotic movie with a formula of money no object, coherent thoughts or basic laws of physics, common sense and intelligibility need not apply. One star because I realise it takes effort to make a movie, a second because of some sort of misguided sympathy for the people who will enjoy this drivel.