Ally-42

At the risk of sounding pretentious, this is a genre spanning Lynchian neo-noir take on the high school murder mystery. Joseph Gordon-Levitt casts off his 3rd Rock from the Sun image and fills the role of the anti-hero simply trying to find out the truth perfectly. The high school world the characters inhabit with their dialogue and actions from Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, seems almost alien to the real world and yet close enough to reality to still be familiar and therefore seemingly appropriate. And to top it all off, when the lights go up the whole thing makes complete sense. It's easy to try to seem clever by leaving the audience wondering what just happened and hoping they'll come up with the explanation to your movie that you couldn't manage yourself, it takes talent to take an audience on such a trip and, in the end, show them the map of how they got there.

Damn, did i just sound pretentious?

Very funny film, well written and acted by Craig Ferguson. Chris Langham shows that he is a very underrated and under-used comedy actor, the character he portrays being like a template for Roy Mallard his unseen interviewer in the BBC series 'People Like Us'. Made better in my opinion by the fact that the Indian restaurant that they go to in Glasgow is just around the corner from my flat.

When sitting down to watch this I hoped that what I would see would be impressive and maybe even match some of the WWF's highlights over the last few years (Survivor Series 1998 springs to mind). I was not disappointed. With the exception of the Women's title match and the European title match every fight was better than average match. Particular highlights were:

Kurt Angle v Chris Benoit. An excellent and brave match considering how out of vogue purely technical matches seem to be these days.

Vince McMahon v Shane McMahon. A bit predictable at times but it shows that despite being the son of a multi-millionaire (billionaire?) Shane is a superb athlete and is willing to put his body on the line for the company (see Backlash 2001 for further proof).

T.L.C. II. I thought the original Tables, Ladders and Chairs match was impressive, this one was better, more competitors, more destruction of tables and more destruction of bodies. How the wrestlers manage to do this is beyond me.

Triple H v The Undertaker. Everything about this match was good, from Triple H's entrance to a live performance of his music by Motorhead to the ending with some excellent wrestling in between. Triple H really has proven himself to be the best in the WWF. Not the most popular or the most photogenic, but the best at selling his own moves and selling his opponents moves. He seems to be one of the few wrestlers who will make himself look bad or cowardly to make others look good.

The Rock v Stone Cold Steve Austin. What was looking to be a good match between the WWF's two most popular fighters was taken far beyond expectations with the most unexpected and shocking heel turn for a long time. When The Rock turned heel at Survivor Series 1998 it was surprising, and made that Pay-Per-View the best I had ever seen. Stone Cold's turn was more shocking and pushed this one close to Survivor Series 1998.

What totally confirmed this PPV as the WWF's best ever was the highlights shown immediately afterwards. As 'My Way' by Limp Bizkit played over action from earlier in the night the full extent of how good this event had been was shown. Hopefully somehow this will be improved upon but I have absolutely no idea how.