CityLife

Kevin Bourke's turkeys of 2008

Pacino and De Niro in Righteous Kill

THE year had its usual quota of wretchedly unfunny ‘romantic comedies’, cynical sequels and miserably-contrived attempts to exploit niche markets.

But in the end, it doesn’t really matter to me how many variants of, let’s just say, High School Musical or its blood relative Twilight are churned out by the studios.

Anyone who went to see Superhero Movie, for instance, only have themselves to blame.

Bangkok Dangerous with Nicolas Cage was as wretched as its silly title.

It’s a bit more upsetting to see former heroes like Robert de Niro and Al Pacino reduce themselves to the workaday likes of Righteous Kill – another silly title, incidentally.

It’s also been deeply disappointing in the last couple of weeks to see the previously unimpeachable Baz Luhrmann inflict the dull, lifeless and stupendously expensive Australia on us all.

The Dark Knight was absurdly over-rated and took itself much, much too seriously.

But for sheer critical gushing and emperor’s new clothes crowd-following, Steve McQueen’s Hunger, about Bobby Sands and the hunger strke, really took the biscuit.

McQueen, a considerable artist in other fields, clearly approached the film simply and solely as an art work, forgetting that truly great films need heart and soul to touch people and that they’re called ‘motion pictures’ for a reason.