The Brown Note Movie Review

The Hughes brothers, of Menace II Society fame, haven't fared so well solo and this crime and corruption potboiler was understandably panned but still contains Russell Crowe and Mark Wahlberg to ease the pain. Enough for genre fans.

They'll be no fighting in the war film room! A head to head battle between three of the most prominent modern war films, Saving Private Ryan v Black Hawk Down v The Thin Red Line. I must've been on a good day as SPR is my most overrated film of the last 25 years. Easy winner here.

Despite the apparently heavy subject of disabled people and prostitutes (a dinner table classic), director Ben Lewin's wonderful and under-seen film is full of warmth and easy to get sucked into, thanks to awards worthy central performances from John Hawkins and Helen Hunt (!!!!).

A look back at the 2013 winners. No idea why.

For me, Paul Thomas Anderson is ahead of his probable peers, David Fincher/Christopher Nolan etc. The most consistent, the most artistic and the most challenging. His take on religious cults is not even his best work, yet still unforgettable and including magnificent turns from Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams.

Ang Lee's memorable take on Yann Martel's novel dazzled on first view (as I certainly note here) but falls apart badly on subsequent viewings (as I would say now). Visually amazing though and with a subtly revolutionary view on religion.

Naomi Watts won an Oscar and Ewan McGregor was subtley effective, in this eventually shattering take on the Asian tsunami destroying a holiday zone. Based on the real life experience of Spainard, Maria Belon.

I've had plenty negative to say about Steven Spielberg over the years, especially when dealing potentially noble historical projects. The film shines through it's quiet opening two thirds, spent with a magnificent Daniel Day-Lewis but falls to pieces in it's courtroom drama finale.

Chopper director Andrew Dominik's crime potboiler boast some impressive turns from Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta and is definitely worth a once through, is slightly messy and a little forgettable.

For me the Wachowskis' adaptation of David Mitchell's tome on standing up to authority and the little ripple effects of inspiration throughout time, is arguably the most underappreciated film this century so far. Riven with faults but aiming for the heavens and filled with stunning film-making, even on a philosophical level. The cast play multiple character in different eras as one small act of de...

Writer-director, Martin McDonagh's middle film between the sublime, In Bruges, and slightly overrated, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, is the least good out of the three but he's never going to be less than interesting. Stellar cast but a little messier this time around.

I had not been impressed by director Kathyrn Bigelow as a director by the time she inexplicably won best picture, director and screenplay for essentially Point Break in Iraq, The Hurt Locker, an even worse winner than Argo. The excellent, taught and expertly paced hunt for Osama movie, Zero Dark Thirty was everything that film wasn't.

Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy are a superb film - I know what I said. I must've had a spell on me to rate this so dwarf-singing snooze-fest so highly, the films haven't improved with age.

The people that brought you the godawful Paranormal Activity series dropped this vastly superior, Scott Derrickson, directed chiller. I'm always a sucker for Ethan Hawke anyway but this is a far more atmospheric work with a terrifying soundtrack.

David O. Russell was on an incredible run by Silver Linings, backed by his own great writing and a stellar cast.

This is definitely an era where I seemed to hand out 8/10's like candy because there are just to many glaringly awful directorial choices (John Goodman, I'm looking at you) for that to be true. A masterclass of acting from Denzel Washington and a terrific plane sequence make it worth wading through the occasional muck.

The middle two thirds of this Tarrantino western are flat out classic, sadly the opening twenty and especially the dire comic book final quarter, where Jamie Foxx tanks the film in comic book madness, undercut a near masterpiece.

This fascinating and original southern eco-drama from writer-director, Benh Zeitlin, deserved the mark it made.

Virtually every best picture winner of the 2010s was a total farce, no exception here. Ben Affleck got his flat-lining career back on track with a shock success in the directing chair with the superb Gone Baby Gone, followed with the half brilliant, half poor Heat rip-off, The Town, and this forgettable Iranian embassy siege drama was the weakest of the three yet won best picture. Go figure.

I have an enormous amount of affection for British director, Nick Loves film, The Football Factory, I also love both Ray Winstone and cult hard nosed British cop show The Sweeney. Only that can explain how I gave this car crash 4/10.

Pretty happy with my view on things here, as Christopher Nolan raps up what rarely in the modern era was really at least four movies squeezed into three. That final ten minutes though CHRIST, what were you thinking.

I'm a total sucker for a southern pot-boiler but it seems I was far more enamored of this film than the critics. I also cannot remember a single thing about it and the director doesn't seem to have won any Oscars after this.

Wow this really was the era where I overrated everything, don't listen to me at all, it's worth barely a 6. Oliver Stone's barren run continues to stretch all the way back to JFK, with this amiable yet violent and lurid pot dealing movie overloaded with improbabilities (see also Ridley Scott fail in entirely different ways with the future classic (I tells thee) The Counselor). Happy the 70's-90's...

Everything about this sumptuous prohibition era gangster film is superb, apart from the films itself, leaving Tom Hardy adrift in a classy, highly watchable sea of cringe. Aussie director John Hillcoat is never less than interesting.

Not quite as good as I give it but an early look into how capable Matthew McConaughey would become as an actor, in legendary director, William Friedkin's astonishingly grimey and controversially offensive southern pot-boiler.