Space Cowboys
Director: Clint Eastwood
Bug Rating: 2.5/5

In space, no-one can hear you babble aimlessly.
Pity that wasn't the case in this fairly ho-hum adventure/comedy from Clint Eastwood, who not only stars but also directs and produces. The results show he should perhaps be taking it a little easier in old age.
For old age is the go here, as NASA needs a crackerjack team of astronauts to rescue a wayward Russian satellite, drifting towards earth and certain destruction courtesy of some faulty American technology.
NASA calls on their best, their brightest and fittest astronauts to go on a daring mission into the black yonder to save planet earth, etc etc.
So what the hell, then, are four of the oldest dudes in all of Hollywood doing up there, fighting all the perils of space travel such as broken air locks and misplaced false teeth?
Is this really the best NASA can do? If so, it is little wonder space exploration is so boring these days.
NASA calls on Frank Corvin (Clint, who really plays Clint very well), a retired pilot who could have been an astronaut if it wasn't for space travel politics and smarmy NASA bigwig Bob Gerson (the evergreen James Cromwell).
Now Corvin is 60 plus, and quite possibly nudging 70 (as in real life, huh Clint?).
Somehow, Corvin manages to bribe Gerson into letting him go up into space to fix the problem. Not only that, he insists his crew must be the rest of his aborted mission from the 1920s, or whenever. No problems there, except the old crew are exactly that ... old.
They are Tank Sullivan (James Garner), Jerry O'Neil (Donald Sutherland) and Hawk Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones). Each does an excellent job of playing themselves; so faultlessly in most cases you canhardly see the seams
|As the old guys set about training to go on their mission, they joke about their age, pick up girls and duel (about 50% success rate) with their younger counterparts. All the while, Gerson tries to derail them but they continuously beat the odds, and faster than you can light the blue touch paper and retire, they are all up in space.
Space Cowboys is not overly funny, though it does have its moments. And some of the space scenes are quite well filmed and develop as much tension as a film of this nature allows for. But it has too many problems, and big ones at that.
Space Cowboys is very predictable and even the most uncritical of viewers will see the plot unfold, neatly and predictably... perhaps, it might be suggested, as an elderly audience would prefer it.
The performances are decidedly run of the mill; so many superstars and perhaps the best character actor (Cromwell) around should have been able to dress up even the most mundane of scripts with consummate ease.
And would four guys, admittedly denied their moment of glory in an earlier life, just go into space with no pleading, begging or otherwise? Unlikely, wouldn't you say? Particularly when all four are worrying about hair, memory and bodily function loss.
Each just absolutely jumps at the chance to go through back-breaking training to fight g-force and other hard parts associated with space travel.
No, Space Cowboys will appeal to a few. Probably very few. What could have been a pretty good movie ends up being a bit slow moving and decidedly creaky, just like its stars.

-Michael Gordon-Brown

High Fidelity
Director: Stephen Frear
Bug rating: 3.5 out of 5.

With no small amount of glee did I front up to see this film. Being a Cusack fan, I'd pay to hear him read the phonebook,
such is my enjoyment of his acting.
High Fidelity doesn't disappoint. The cast are a study in 'no worries' acting. Complementing this perfectly is the script; no small feat given that much of it is delivered quick-fire, in idiosyncratic bursts, seemingly ad-lib.
Where this movie failed to really ring true was the storyline itself. Cusack spends his days surrounded by his one true love – old vinyl.
Trouble is, much of the time is spent recalling other loves, like the 'top 5' girlfriend experiences he keeps in his head. These experiences,
plus the interaction between the likes of his two 'employees', Dick and Barry, and freaky mania from Joan Cusack, his current X's
best friend, make for well-realised interplay from the off-kilter characters.
And so one deliciously awaits the outcome of Cusack's remembrances ... will he give up one unrealistic love for another? Alas, I was disappointed. It all just sort of ... resolves.
My point? I couldn't help but think that this American translation of a British novel didn't quite make the jump across the Atlantic. Or conversely, I can imagine being less surprised at the outcome were it a European effort.
Which is not to take away from the novel, just that I don't think the Yanks have fully wrapped their heads around it.
But you be the judge ... one way or another, it's an entertaining flick.

- Ewan Yamates

Gossip
Director:
Bug rating: 2/5

Finally, a new challenger has emerged for the worst ending since The Game.
In that game, if you'll recall, Michael Douglas swandived off a building into a waiting mattress and all ended well with Douglas and Sean Penn hugging like old chums.
The whole movie was absolutely woeful, trying way too hard to be dark and complex and ending up virtually unwatchable, with a ludicrous plot about some game that ends up out of control – and then the ending skittled any hope of salvaging the mess.
It was a slim hope, but where there is hope... well there is hope. Why did the moviemakers refuse to end it with Douglas splattering all over the New York pavement and then Penn reflecting how the game of life does not always go to plan, or whatever the hell moralistic point they were trying to make. It still makes one shudder with fear that an ending that bad would be repeated.
And now, reviewers and moviegoers alike have had one of their worst fears realised, with this somewhat unusual teen sex/crime/weirdo thriller achieving new heights in ending ineptitude.
Like The Game, it tries very hard to be very good and fails miserably. As one American reviewer very cleverly quipped, "Here's some gossip, this movie ain't that good".
Unlike The Game it is interesting to a point that is very quickly reached and then the film peters out to oblivion, whereas of course The Game was never interesting.
The plot centres around three uni students, studying journalism, of course. They are spunky and sassy female Jones (Leena Heady), surly and weird Travis (Norman Reedus) and suave but-you-know-he's-got-a-dark-past Derek (James Marsden).
They basically smoke a lot, drink a hell of a lot, study very little. Go to parties, get laid all the time (not Travis) and enjoy starting rumours – you know, the usual stuff uni students do.
As part of their journalism course, a plotline initiated then discarded, they start a particularly vicious rumour that school ice queen and eternal prude Naomi (Kate Hudson, read Goldie Hawn's daughter) had rough sex with boyfriend Beau (Dawson's Creek's Joshua Jackson) at a party. They have fun, observing the rumour as it spins out of control to threesomes, orgies and them doing the act while standing on the fire escape.
And it is at that point what could have been an interesting and original teen movie does the big cop out and becomes just plain boring.
Soon the rumour is that Beau raped her, he is arrested and Jones, the female remember, begins to panic. We learn, of course, Derek and Naomi have a past together and Travis gets weirder, for no apparent reason at all. The rumour now is that Naomi is dead and Derek is being investigated.
And so the movie downspirals, out of control like a runaway car that just won't crash and burn.
Gossip does have positives – it is interesting for a while, it is unusual and a few parts are generally tense. The young actors do a decent job. It poses interesting questions about how truth and rumour often blend into a dangerous mix.
But it is all very contrived, especially that ending, and this always plays on your mind. For example, there are no ugly people in Gossip.
It also seems to suggest that all uni students drink hard liquor, all hours of the day. "Have a drink, calm down," Derek repeatedly says to Jones, who knocks back the straight scotch while Travis sits there looking weird. I can assure you, it is not an accurate depiction of university students. The minority, anyway.
And three talented character actors are totally wasted – there is Eric Bogosian, as the smart and smartarsed journalism professor, Sharon Lawrence (completely undeveloped) as the high school counsellor and Mario Van Peebles as the cop investigating the whole sordid affair. Wasted character actors is a big no-no in this reviewer's books. But at least they are there.
Have I mentioned the ending yet? I have? Oh. It's not good, not good at all. It ruins what could have been a somewhat decent flick.
The only real gossip here is to walk out as soon as The Game begins to play on your mind. Or sooner.

- Michael Gordon-Brown

One Day in September
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Bug rating: 4 out of 5.

If you thought it was a fluke SOCOG pulled off the “best Olympics ever” with all their incompetence, you had better check out One Day in September to see how bad things can get.
In this year’s Oscar winner for best documentary, director Kevin Macdonald takes us on a bloody step-by-step journey through the chilling and deadly hostage crisis of the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich. He weaves the true-to-life plot between interviews and archival footage to tell the story of how Germany’s Olympics became the Olympics of horror.
The seriousness of the doco never fails to resonate as at every turn real people tell an unreal story of what happened when post-war Germany attempted to prove to the world it had become a peaceful, democratic, cosmopolitan, reformed and relaxed country. The tragic events that unfolded at the Munich Games laid bare the myth that Germany was still a strict, well-organised, security-obsessed nation. Instead, we are witness to the sterile truth that Germany and the International Olympic Committee couldn’t have been more ill-prepared for armed terrorists and death in the Olympic Village.
Michael Douglas narrates the drama with a sober edge that emphasises just how little the world has come to deal with the events of September 5, 1972 when eight Palestinian terrorists smashed through embarrassingly weak security to take eleven Israeli athletes hostage. The demand: the release of 236 political prisoners.
Of course, German authorities couldn’t give in to the demand, but under pressure from the IOC to let the Games continue, they negotiated – unsuccessfully – with almost no real plan of action for the circumstances.
Archival footage shows how lax security guards let Olympic fans jump the fence when not all the seats were filled; fortunately they weren’t armed. We see images of athletes lazing around the pool and playing table tennis in the sun as metres away the drama unfolded in murder and failed talks with the terrorists' negotiator. On top of all that, a strategy for some untrained security officers to sneak in with some guns blazing was cancelled at the last minute because no one had noticed until then the entire plan was being televised and that the hostages had a TV in their room.
It would have been farcical if not for the fact that it ends in high drama on a runway, resulting in explosions and death.
The brilliance of this film lies in the straightforward telling of an almost absurd tale of incompetence by the German Olympic authorities of the time. Between the somewhat sad interviews with police and security officers and footage of their many unarmed, uneducated, untrained men looking quite helpless, one can’t help but feel slightly ashamed at how the hostage crisis was handled.
Macdonald's film, however, never makes you feel that you are being fed propaganda; rather it takes you for a ride through the hard, cold facts of what occurred on the worst day of modern Olympic history. See it and you’ll thank God for Michael Knight.

- Nigel Zimmermann