2007's Top 50

Daniel Plainview: "Drainage! Drainage, Eli! Drained dry, you boy! If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and I have a straw and my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"



There's an atonal discordant hum that opens There Will Be Blood. It builds quickly into a sharp, piercing crescendo as the camera focuses on a set of hills in the California desert. The camera pans back down into the shaft that Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is situated in. Sweating, dirty, and determined, he picks at the rock below, looking for a sign of the oil that is to come.

For nearly 15 minutes, there is not a single line of dialogue. Johnny Greenwood's (Radiohead) orchestral soundtrack once again goes quiet, to a minimal buzz, as we're set to observe the mechanical and methodical processes of Plainview as he eventually discovers oil, breaking his leg and acquiring a son in the process. At times seemingly unrelated to the action, the music swells and sets the viewer into a state of unease. Those first 15 minutes are so integral to understanding this monumental film because it represents much of what Paul Thomas Anderson has achieved with this film: this is one of the most bizarre, detailed, and fascinating studies of the human psyche I've ever seen.

Set in the late 1800s/early 1900s, the story follows Daniel Plainview's rise to success as an oil tycoon in Southern California. But this period piece is unlike any Western made yet, both for its unnatural and unnerving soundtrack and for its ultimately horrifying conclusion about its characters. After a tip from one Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), who may or may not be the twin brother of local preacher Eli Sunday, Daniel Plainview and his son, H.W. Plainview (Dillon Freasier), arrive in Little Boston, a small ranching community where the oil is literally seeping just under the surface of the ground. Upon meeting with the Sunday family, the two clear forces at work in this masterful film clash: Daniel and Eli.

Eli, the leader of The Church of The Third Revelation, is a rather inspired and inflammatory evangelical Christian, whose sermons cause people to scream for mercy and beg for their saviour. It is this precise personality that Daniel directs most of his own personal distaste for mankind at. Both men are obsessed with people, though for reasons that are polar opposites. Eli seeks acceptance and control over everyone, while Daniel desires to distance himself from everyone else.

There Will Be Blood plays like a horror film about vertical integration, real estate speculation, religion, and most concretely, oil. In this sense, it's very much of a horror film for our times. Oil lurks and seeps like a monster beneath the Earth, enthralling the greedy, gobbling up lost souls, and quite literally killing those who would drag it to the surface. The evil of men can be measured by their greed for it, and the desire for the wealth and power it brings. In an early scene, oil is smeared on a baby's forehead like a baptismal rite.

Of the many themes strung throughout this narrative, it is the focus on Daniel's growing distaste for personal interaction that I found the most fascinating and compelling. Let it be known - although I suppose there weren't much doubts left, if there were ever any - that Daniel Day-Lewis absolutely deserves the Oscar for best actor for this role. Day-Lewis is the rare kind of actor who most deserves to be called that: an actor. He doesn't just play characters, he embodies them, he devours them. He can spend one or two years just studying a character, becoming it. He portrays Daniel Plainview with a frightening attention to detail, capturing the man's descent into insanity with subtle, quiet moments of tenderness, and a murderous and bloodshot stare of his eyes. He radiates strength and power at every turn, absolutely in control of his environment.

Paul Dano is also noteworthy for his portrayal of Eli Sunday, a man who so desperately wants to save the souls of everyone who he comes into contact with, yet perhaps for all the wrong reasons. After coming off of Little Miss Sunshine, a role he hardly spoke for, it's refreshing to see him tackle a character so markedly different from his previous one. The moments between him and Day-Lewis are among some of the film's highlights. Their confrontations and battes - psychological and physical - provide even humor among such a dark and serious film.

This is not a film for everyone. It's over 2 and half hours long, it isn't filled with CGI-action sequences. There's no nudity, almost no bad language, and it takes the film until the final 15 minutes to satisfy the promise of the title. Still, I couldn't believe how enraptured I was with the events unfolding on the screen, especially for the length. This isn't a period-piece steeped in documentary-style realism or historical obsession. While the film is very much a realist interpretation of capitalism, religion, and greed, the characters' emotions and drama are front-and-center stage.

This film is about obsession and the obsessive way it's filmed is ahead of its time. Anderson's attention to scenery, to the straightforward language of Daniel Plainview that is so captivating, and to the people who cross his path is what will make this film into a legend. This film is incredibly weird, off-putting, and ultimately, in its final moments, one of the most disturbing and brilliant films I've ever seen. Interpret the ending as you may, but to me, from the second that Eli confronts Daniel at his dinner table over the purchase of the Sunday land, the film is about a determined man falling completely apart, becoming a victim to his own frightening moral standard: no one in the world matters more than he.

And when the blood finally comes at the end, you'll probably have a hand over your mouth in shock just as I did. The conclusion will be debated for years. I imagine that in 5 years, every film student will have to watch There Will Be Blood, to be shown just exactly how you are supposed to make a film, how you're supposed to become a character on the screen, and how you're supposed to take a chance in every way. All of the elements are bold, new, and refreshing on the screen while watching this film. You are surrounded by the world of Daniel Plainview and I found myself still stuck in it when I woke up this morning.

My verdict: This is the best film of 2007. No contest. If I may be so bold, as well, this is probably the best film of the last 10 years. Paul Thomas Anderson has succeeded in creating characters who are so fascinating and real, that you eventually can't even sympathize with them. There Will Be Blood works as an indictment of capitalism, of unchecked greed, of self-serving evangelism, but it's much more than that. This is the what cinema should be. A masterpiece!

At this point of the year (ten days away from 2008) and although I haven't seen the Coens' No Country for Old Men - which, apparently, will be #1 in most 'Best of the Year' lists than any other - I, personally, have found my own #1 for this fabulous year that was 2007. Now, regardless of my huge fondness and respect for the Coens, unfortunely I won't be able to see their film 'till next year, so I suppose it's oficial: Atonement is the best film I've seen in 2007.



Joe Wright's second feature film - after the fabulous Pride & Prejudice - is one of those extremely rare examples of when everything works out perfectly in a film. And I mean everything. Atonement is perfect in every single aspect that makes filmmaking an art: writting, directing, acting, cinematography, editing, music, etc... I feel nothing but sorry for anyone who sees a flaw in this film.

Wright's second film is also his second adaptation of a prestiged literary work (I have read both, I'm proud to say). After Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice" two years ago, this time it was Ian McEwan's "Atonement". Anyone who has read the book knows how powerful it is. How huge its emotional impact is (particularly the end) and how exhausting and brutal it can get as an experience. I remember being completely drained and numb after finishing it, feeling like my heart was ripped out of my chest. Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton's biggest achievement was the way they managed to be faithful to the source material (even with the obvious, occasional changes), dividing the narrative structure in two principal parts and a short epilogue, and also keeping the power and essence of the ending. Watching the film felt just like reading the book again... except in two hours. I tell you, that is a magical feeling.



In both cases - book and film - the first part of the story covers the pre-WWII era in the life of the Tallises, an upper class english family who knows nothing but wealth and privilege. On an ordinary summer day at their luxurious countryside estate, impressionable 13-year old Briony (Saoirse Ronan) witnesses, and misunderstands two encounters between her older sister, Cecilia (Kiera Knightley) and the housekeeper's charming and educated son, Robbie (James McAvoy). Feeling a combination of jealousy and overprotectiveness, she falsely accusates Robbie of a horrible crime and forever changes those three lives.

The film jumps four years - again, like in the book - to find the three characters' lives altered by the break of WWII. Devastated and lost Robbie is now a soldier fleeing with the rest of the British army toward the English Channel. Cecilia, still in love with Robbie and eternally waiting for him, works as a nurse treating wounded soldiers back from the war. And Briony (now played by Romola Garai), also a nurse, now completely aware of the consequences of her actions as a foolish 13-year old girl, who, tending to the brutally wounded and holding the hands of dying men, seeks some kind of atonement.

It doesn't reach half of the book's emotional impact, but Atonement is not an easy film to endure. It's much more likely to be appreciated for its artistry than for its entertainment value. When you look at the film's poster or trailer you see two young people in love, but in reality that love story isn't as important as Briony's serch for atonement. Atonement isn't about two people falling in love and then spending the rest of the film trying to end up together, it's about how our actions (even when we're just 13) can affect others, how we - human beings - are all an expected event away from watching our lives being destroyed.



Joe Wright does an absolutely fantastic job directing. Earlier in the film, in order to capture two scenes in particular from the book in which Briony's perceptions don't match the reality, he shows us events twice - once through Briony's eyes looking through a widow and once from a neutral, correct perspective. This reminded me of Kurosawa's Rashômon, distances kept. With the help of cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Jacqueline Durran, editor Paul Tothill and Dario Marianelli's Score, he also makes it a completely gorgeous film to watch. In more than one occasion in the film's second half, it felt like watching a painting in motion. This obviously includes the very talked about, almost famous scene of the Dunkirk retreat. A vast 5-minute re-creation of one of England's shining moments, except through a perspective of horror and descruction that makes war what it is. Breathtaking. One of the most beautiful and brilliant scenes I've seen in my life.

Acting-wise, both Keira Knightley and James McAvoy show chemistry enough on screen and both give good performances individually. Knightley proves (again!) that she's much more than a pretty face and that her true potential can only be extracted playing sensitive, literary characters, not playing pirate on american blockbusters. McAvoy adds another great performance to his career and is already in the group of best male performances I've seen this year. Still, as exceptional as they are, the standout here is 13-year old Saoirse Ronan, who owns the screen from the moment she's introduced. Ronan's Briony is a spoiled child one moment, and a spurned young woman pining after a man she can't have the next. She's both innocent and diabolical, bright yet foolish... one moment you like her for her cleverness and next you want to slap her for her arrogance. My guess is that girl is going places. I think I'll even watch I Could Never Be Your Woman just so I can see her again.

It will be very hard the Coens' No Country for Old Men to steal Atonement its first place in my 'Best of 2007' list. I'll give it the chance, of course, but I'm afraid Atonement got to me first...

Ed Tom Bell: "I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself gainst the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would've operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the gas chamber at Huntsville here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killed a 14-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. Be there in about fifteen minutes. I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job - not to be glorious. But I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. You can say it's my job to fight it, but I don't know what it is anymore. More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, "OK, I'll be part of this world."



Although it's been a few days since I saw No Country for Old Men - the only 2008 Oscar nominee that made me resort to 'illegal' means in order to watch it before February 24 - I still don't know what exactly to make of it. It's basically the brilliant, mesmerizing masterpiece it's been hailed as, but... but it's so side-swiping that it makes you feel as if you've melted in your seat and haven't even noticed. Words can barely describe it. There are barely any words in the picture itself. As it seems, at least. It's a very tough film fueled by very tough situations coerced by very tough characters. In theory, and put simply, this is a film not everyone would like. And yet, it's been hailed as some of the greatest American cinema in history. Funny how that works.

The Coen Brothers have always shown a powerful deal of talent and strong narrative in their films, with Fargo standing as their best film till 2007, but they reached a whole other level of filmmaking sublimity with this film. Whereas Cronenberg's Eastern Promises is like English literature with western influences, No Country for Old Men is more akin to American literature with early European influences - and lots of it too. No Country for Old Men plays out like a Christopher Marlowe play or other Elizabethan tragedies. Its art lies in the thriving of evil throughout the film, and the supreme torture of any character remotely resembling good. This leaves a sort of beautiful, real-life inconsistency that seems to represent an apocalyptic outcome. It begs us to question aspects of reality that many people will find disturbing.

Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is a sadistic killer on the hunt for his money that has been taken by local provincial, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin). Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) gets involved in the situation and watches the events unfold days after they have happened. As Anton continues a killing spree for his money, Bell, looking at retirement, watches the case with a poetic understanding of everything gone wrong in the world.

I don't know what persuaded the Coens to create such a different film, but the result is masterful and also, very hard for audiences to "get". The last 20 minutes of the film may leave people wondering, "Why did that just happen?", "Does that make any descriptive sense?". It's hard to talk about this film without spoiling it, but the way I saw it, Anton is the absolute of evil, of death. Such a force can be beaten, tricked, won against and you can even get lucky against it - kind of like in a coin toss. Yet it always, always survives to destroy something another day. The last 20 minutes of the film is a narrative of reality. The characters thought it was going to end one way, the audience thought it was going to end that same way, but it didn't. That's because the same force that Anton represents is found everywhere - and it caught Llewelyn.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a character similar to Morgan Freeman's in Seven. He represents the knowledge and purity of this world - the opposite of Anton. As such, he cannot be destroyed either, even when in close contact with the opposing force, but he can, and often is, weary of the evil, the death and the battles. His monologue at the end of the film, recalling dreams he had, might be a lot for audiences to take in before the screen cuts to the end title cards. Even the most intelligent film critics and historians are baffled and continue to converse about the ending's relevance. I personally believe Bell's dream is a longing for a peaceful world he wishes to create, but he can't. He is an old man who failed to help anyone, thus there is "no country" for him. I think it's the perfect ending. It solidifies Bell's relevance to the story and it was ultimately where the entire film was going all along.

While Tommy Lee Jones delivers a masterful performance, it's Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh that will creep audiences out of their skin. His ruthlessness is undeniable and his presence onscreen is more menacing than any slasher villain I can recall in recent years. His initial "coin toss" is one of the most edge of your seat, psychological freak out moments of the film. The entire idea, while sick, is perfect for the character and Bardem handles it without fault. I'm proud to be one of the few people - world population speaking - that got to predict his success years and years ago, since the first time I saw him in Almodóvar's Live Flesh. Josh Brolin kinda underwhelmed me, but I think that's because he makes me feel uncomfortable on a cosmic level - besides the fact that I think The Goonie everytime I see him. Then, there's Kelly Macdonald. She's the kind of actress that can light up a film with one single scene, and that's just what does here. Carla Jean is, up until the third act, a "barely there" character, shining like a small nugget of pure gold you can see, but not physically reach. But then it suddenly grows and you start humping it, you love it so much.

While my initial reaction to the film wasn't so positive (I still say There Will Be Blood is a superior film), I've had plenty of time to think about it. (It's part of the reason why it has taken so long for me to get a review up.) Ultimately, this film does away with the common Hollywood film traits and, like many French films, mocks the classic Hollywood style with its unusual plotline. This only enhances the film's study in reality and its evils. Dark, but witty, cunning but hits you hard. This is the Coen Brothers at their best. An exquisitely crafted film that ought to be called a picture, a fantastic one.

Last night, after watching Once, as I came home, I wondered how would I rate it. At first I thought a 4, maybe a 4½... But then I suddenly realized just how beautiful the film I had just seen really was. How close to perfection it got. Once I realized that I knew I had no problems whatsoever giving it a perfect rating.



Luckily recognized by some - winner of the audience award at this year's Sundance Film Festival - John Carney's film is an authentic anthem to filmmaking. A modern day musical with a ridiculously low-budget that is the ultimate proof that YOU DON'T NEED MILLIONS to make cinema. Shot in a documentary-ish way and with a stunning and compelling soundtrack (probably the best of the year) Once is a film of pure and shinning beauty. A little unannounced masterpiece that is one of the highlights of the year.

A simple and sweet story of a busker/vacuum-cleaner repairman and an immigrant flower seller/cleaning lady who meet in the streets of Dublin and spend a week writing and making music. Unnamed Girl (19-year-old Czech singer/songwriter Markéta Irglová) meets unnamed Guy (irish band The Frames' lead singer/guitarist) as he plays for loose change in a Dublin street. She's drawn to his music. He's drawn to her... An immediate and powerful bond is formed bethween the of them as they spend a week making music. Writting, rehearsing and eventually recording songs, haunting and powerful songs.

As they grow closer, so does the intensity of their music, almost as a way to distract them from their feelings. The songs' lyrics match their stories and speak as much as the dialogues, just like musicals are supposed to. The chemistry between Hansard and Irglová (who had already recorded together before) on screen as well as musically speaking make every song and every scene a joy to listen and to watch. There are some memorable scenes, like the one in a music store where they play together for the first time or a certain one in the back of a bus that have sheer genius written all over it. The film breathes, emantes music. There aren't just two main characters, there are three.



Even though it may begin to apeear so, this isn't your typical 'boy-meets-girl equals happy ending' kind of film. What they feel for each other may be real but, like in real life, things don't always end like we want them to... She is married and has a 2-year-old daughter who she hopes doesn't grow up without a father and he still loves his girlfriend who packed off for London. Their destinations aren't the same, but their love for music is, which will lead them to a nothing less than perfect week. And us, a nothing less than perfect film.

Once is the kind of film that reminds us why we love movies. The kind that changes lives. For anyone to whom - like myself - Cinema and Music are everything, this little irish pearl is everything you could possibly dream. Unmissable!

For any filmmaker born in Europe, to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival is like... well, like a dream come true. It's basically the greatest achievement that filmmaker can aspire in his or her career and lifetime. Writer/director Cristian Mungiu wrote his name in History last May with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a stunning, simply stunning film. Another one from one of the most promising cinematographies of today.

Much like Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest, who started this Romanian New Wave, Mungiu's film has a vaguely political nature, in the way it criticizes and analyzes the effects of Communism in Eastern Europe, but it doesn't have the clever, dark humor and graciousness in which those two filmmakers told their stories. Quite the contrary. 4 Months... is as dark, dramatic, gripping and devastating as a film can get.



Set in 1987, during the final years of Nicolae Ceausescu's regime, the film takes place over the course of one long and menacing day in the lives of two college students. The film's first brilliant shot shows us roomates Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) making preparations for what appears to be a trip. Packing their bags, cleaning their dorm room, debating over taking notes for exams they will miss and feeding the goldfish. We soon discover that Gabita is pregnant and has decided to abort - ilegally, obviously.

Gabita is the pregnant one, but she's maddeningly helpless. It's Otilia who takes care of the situation, who is forced to make all the arrangements: securing the hotel room where the procedure will be performed, meeting the demanding abortionist - ironically named Mr. Bebe (the convincingly creepy Vlad Ivanov) - and even helping to pay the high cost of the abortion. When they get to the hotel, things go horribly wrong. The fact that they got a room in a different hotel then the one he had requested, that Gabita didn't meet him in person and especially that she lied about the lenght of her pregnancy makes the sinister abortionist charge more for his services than he was supposed to, and the two girls, to pay a price they never thought they would...

The fact that 4 Months 'stole' the Golden Palm from films like No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly or Zodiac may help to understand its real brilliance. In the last few years I've had the "Is Cinema Art?" discussion hundreds of times. Many say it isn't, others stick to the original belief that it is. And the discussion is useless, really. Each one believes in whatever he wants. However, this is one of those films that I would use as an example if I had to defend my point of view. It will get inside your thoughts and guts and won't leave them. It will shake the very core of your existence. It will make you hate and love humankind at the same time. It will tear you apart.



Mungui creates a grim landscape of dilapidated buildings, dark hallways and green gray rooms that just get under your skin. One particular scene, at the birthday party of Otilia's boyfriend's mother, becomes a kind of tour de force, with the joy and loudness of the celebrants making Otilia's misery all the more palpable before our very eyes. In another, a tense, gripping and heartbreaking sequence towards the end of the film, she must dispose of the aborted fetus in the darkness and squalor of an unlamented urban hell. Virtually every scene, no matter how long, is shot without cutting. In long, hand-held takes, the camera bears witness to the events in what feels like real time. The story is told through Otilia's emotional responses. Anamaria Marinca's performance is powerful beyond words.

If I said that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days wasn't about abortion it would obviously seem false. It's impossible to run from the issue. It was obvious, and Mungiu knew it, that the film would raise (again) discussions and debates on the subject. Some will make the point "If abortion was legal at the time, those women didn't have to go through what they did. They would just go to a clinic, and that was it". Ceaucescu outlawed abortion and contraception in Romania in 1966. By 1989 - the end of communism - 500.000 estimated women died from illegal abortions and 200.000 children grew up in orphanages. Still, no one needs those statistics. Everyone makes their own mind on the matter. 4 Months... is less about abortion than it is about the power of friendship. Its power knows no limits or boundaries, and this film will teach or remind you that in the most painful and cruel way possible. A masterpiece.

One of the 22 films in competition in the authentic feast of cinema that was last year's Cannes Film Festival and my new favourite for this year's "Best Foreign Language Film" Academy Award, The Edge of Heaven is German-born Turkish writer/director Fatih Akin's fifth feature film, and it's also one of the most beautiful, profoundly meaningful films I've ever seen.

Akin's middle entry to a still unfinished trilogy (which started with his '04 Golden Bear winner Head-On) and undoubtably his most accomplished work to date, The Edge of Heaven follows, in a general sense, what Head-On started three years ago. Akin's interest in cultural differences - particularly between Germany and Turkey - is present in both films. The way in which those two seemingly divergent cultures clashed and how the so called 'German Turks' (he, being one of them) deal with those differences is as well.

While Head-On was set in Germany only and was an examination of the power (good or destructive) of love, The Edge of Heaven moves us back and forth from Turkey to Germany and its subject is death. The third film, Akin has revealed, will be about evil. Head-On was basically about two characters; The Edge of Heaven is about six. The way in which the lives and emotional arcs of those six people - four Turks and two Germans - criss-cross through love and tragedy.



The film is also uncomparably more effective in the way it highlights the incorporeal political and cultural lines that both connect and separate both nations. Set at a time when Turkey is on the verge of joining the European Union, Akin's film brandishes a critical look at the impossiblity of uniting Turkey, a schizophrenic country belonging to both Asia and Europe, with the union. Akin only scrapes the surface of that very political issue though, he's much more focused on the pertinent lives of these characters spirited away from their homelands, confusing themselves with labels such as "a Turkish professor of German language teaching in a German university."

The film opens and closes in Turkey, during the "Bayram", a festival or holiday regardless of national or religious differences. First seen near the Black Sea coast, Hamburg Univ. prof Nejat (Baki Davrak) is next seen arriving in nearby Bremen, where his father, spirited 70-something Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz), still visits prostitutes as a cure for his loneliness. One day, Ali meets Yeter (Nursel Köse), a middle-aged prostitute, also Turkish, who agrees to move in with him to escape the censure of local Muslim fundamentalists. Yeter has a 27-year-old daughter back in Turkey, Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay), who thinks her mom works in a shoe shop. When Ali is hospitalized after a heart attack, Yeter forms a close relationship with the quiet Nejat.

However, viewers have already been warned, in the film's opening title ("Yeter's Death"), that tragedy is waiting round the corner. Yeter is accidentally killed by Ali in an argument and, as he is incarcerated in a German jail and Yeter's body shipped home, the story shifts to Istanbul, where Nejat has bought a German-language backstreets bookshop. Between times, he's searching for Ayten, to finance her education as a form of reparation.

As another audience warning ("Lotte's Death") appears on screen 40 minutes later, we finally meet Ayten, a political activist in Istanbul using the alias Gul Korkmaz who's on the run from the authorities. Fleeing to Germany, she ends up penniless in Hamburg where she befriends college student Lotte, daughter of comfy, middle-class Susanne (Hanna Schygulla) who was once a free spirit herself. Lotte and Ayten become lovers, setting in motion a complex series of criss-crossing events that changes the lives of the survivors forever as the story shifts back to Turkey.



The film has a vertical, almost procedural style, in which every scene and line of dialogue counts. Akin doesn't try to hide the plot's coincidences or Swiss watch-like precision. He celebrates them and offers them to us loud and clear. After all, life is a coincidence after another. The ultimate and utter brilliance of the Cannes-awarded screenplay doesn't come from its complexity or density (which is a lot), it comes from its honesty and care for human connections and relashionships.

Although far from the punkish, masochistic energy of Head-On, with its car-crashing and wrist-cutting, The Edge of Heaven can still have a devastating effect. The deaths, although announced, are like stabs on our chests. It's like Akin does it on purpose. He introduces us to those people (or characters), makes us care for them only to take them away through random, unexpected accidents. He doesn't, however, do this with a cruel intention. The deaths are mostly catalysts for the characters that live on, some of whom barely miss knowing each other even as they need each other to put together the pieces of their lives. Basically, the film subtly dissects the destructive and redemptory powers of death.

Akin's work is so serene, contemplative and yet so complex that it bypasses any comparisons to any current director and offers pleasing touches of Kieslowskian non-coincidences, though Akin is certainly not on the same level as the legendary Polish director. At least, not yet.

While, on the surface, The Edge of Heaven's premise may sound like the Magnolia/Babel/Crash school of "we're all connected, lets hold hands" filmmaking, Akin takes the model and turns it into pure realism. Instead of random people made tenuously and unauthentically coherent, this film misleads people intimately linked into losing relationships they need to be whole - something that happens everyday in the real world. And told with bluntness, brutality and courage, it lays bare their painful shortcomings with a power almost vanished from current cinema. Right now, at this exact moment, I don't hesitate for a second when I call The Edge of Heaven a masterpiece.

Gus Van Sant, Alfonso Cuarón, Isabel Coixet, Walter Salles, Ethan & Joel Coen, Christopher Doyle, Tom Tykwer, Wes Craven, Gerard Depardieu, etc... All directing their 'little' love story (wrote by them) through the random neighborhoods of Paris.

I was obviously curious about Paris Je T'aime, but I had absolutely NO IDEA the result would be this brilliant! Mainly because it's hard to make this kind of film work. It has been done before, and not very successfully. Putting together eighteen random stories that apparently have nothing to do with each other and linking them in a way that it means something. As far as I'm concerned it was perfectly achieved.



The film flows very naturally, you almost don't realize you're watching eithteen distinct episodes. Each one has its own topic and style, given by each filmmaker, and when put together result in this amazingly beautiful and harmonic mix of short films, all with the same subject: love. And not necessarily the typical 'Man loves Woman' kind of love. All with at least one thing in common: Paris as a scenario. Really, is there a better scenario in this world than Paris? Anyone who has been to that magical city will immediately fall in love with Paris Je T'aime. Some of the shorts will seem realistic, others pretty sureal. The truth is that each one has the ability to show so many different feelings and characters, a pure look at Human nature. I'm not going to describe each segment, not a spoiler... But obviously I have my favourite ones, like Nobuhiro Suwa's ''Place des Victoires'', Tom Tykwer's ''Faubourg Saint-Denis'' or Vincenzo Natali's ''Quartier de la Madeleine''. Who already watched it know what I mean, who didn't will find out soon, I hope. The cast is also interesting. A mix of big american names like Steve Buscemi, Gena Rowlands, Natalie Portman, Elijah Wood, Willem Dafoe, Nick Nolte, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Miranda Richardson and some european 'stars' like Gerard Depardieu, Juliette Binoche, Rufus Sewell, Gaspard Ulliel and Emily Mortimer. Either way, all of them are equally great and a big part of why I personally consider Paris Je T'aime a rare masterpiece. Unmissable!

"Fear lulls our minds to sleep."

2007 was a fabulous year for cinema, we've all come to that conclusion. That fact, however, becomes even more indisputable when we realize that, in one year, we didn't have just one animated masterpiece. Besides Persepolis there was also Ratatouille and Paprika. Now, I won't encourage comparisons, although I don't think there are much doubts left that Ratatouille will win the "Best Animated Feauture" Oscar, but, in my list, Persepolis takes the first place. I'm the first to admit that Brad Bird is an animation genius, in his own way. Pixar certainly deserves credit for creating such unique films, but the truth is that Persepolis is more than that, much more.



Art and cinema don't need to have a pedagogical or political mission. But sometimes they do. Persepolis' release time couldn't have possibly been better. In a time when, due to certain countries' personal interests and colossal misinformations, the word Iran is a reminder of things like nuclear weapons and axis of evil, this film arrives as a cultural textbook and eye-opening tool in the form of film on the history of a much misunderstood nation.

Persepolis, however, is much more than a history lesson. That part, I'd say, is like a bonus. Before that it's a very personal and intimate tale of teenage rebellion, revolution, war and tolerance. Based on illustrator and children's book author Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel of the same name, first released in France in 2000, it tells Satrapi's life story, from her childhood in Iran to the moment she left her country and seeked a different future in France. It does this in half an hour, and does it always with the same amount of passion, style and coherence that many live-action films can only dream of.

Marjane is a Bruce Lee, Rock 'n Roll-loving 9-year-old girl when the story starts in 1978, just as the Iranian Shah is about to be overthrown. The horrors of his regime have oppressed her leftist intellectual family, but their hopes for a free society are dealt an even crueller blow when the Islamic Revolution's theological police state comes to power. Marjane's story then takes her into exile in Vienna, where, as a 14-year-old teenager, she befriends a group of nihilistic hippies and discovers love. First love (hilariously) and betrayed love (even funnier). Marjane finds in Europe a different kind of freedom and comfort, but also racism, loneliness and homelessness. She returns to Tehran in the 1980s for college, which meant putting on the veil again, finding a society where the few rebellions were small and unprofound and whose people had made peace with their fundamentalist masters by caving in. The chain-smoking rebel falls into a depression, then into a bad first marriage and finally, at 24, leaves her homeland for good and settles in France - where Satrapi now lives and works. Through all her adolescent and early adult torments, Marjane is counselled by her earthy, beloved grandmother, a wise, sophisticated and foul-mouthed mentor whose memorable, full-bodied personality belies her 2-D pen-and-ink profile.

This bare synopsis doesn't begin to convey the imaginative breadth of Persepolis, the richness of its characters, the wit with which it encapsulates a huge amount of historical detail or its breezy moments of pure genius, which include heavenly discussions between God and Karl Marx, Marjane's otherworldly advisers, her trips to the black market to buy Iron Maiden tapes hiding under her burqa or her "Eye of the Tiger" impersonation. Marjane might very well be (especially in the childhood/early teenagehood stages) one of the most adorable and easy-to-care-about characters I've ever seen in my life. One who'll give, I hope, Juno MacGuff a run for her money as the year's best teenage heroin, or at the very least, some competition.



It's practically an epic tale, filled with almost every kind of emotion - from irony to terror - you can possibly imagine. Yet, what really makes it work is not just Satrapi's brutal honesty while telling something as personal as her life story, but her simple, highly evocative drawing style. Working with top French animator Vincent Paronnaud, the author has created the motion picture equivalent of her black-and-white panels, which practically shimmer when projected onto the screen. (I've had the chance to go through both the first and second book when I was last in France, so I know what I'm talking about.) This stark palette is particularly effective during sequences of war and brutality, but every scene is suffused with a highly original graphic sense. Persepolis simply doesn't look like any other animated film you've ever seen before, because, in the end, it isn't like anyone of them.

The voice casting functions as a sort of tribute to Satrapi's adopted homeland: Chiara Mastroianni as the teenage and adult Marjane, Catherine Deneuve - Mastroianni's real-life mother - as Marjane's mum, Armenian descendent Simon Abkarian as Marjane's father and 89-year-old Danielle Darrieux, one of France's last surviving grande dames, as Marjane's beloved grandmother. An English-language version has been recorded with Gena Rowlands, Sean Penn and Iggy Pop, but it has yet to be released theatrically and may only surface on DVD. Thank-fuckin'-God! (apologies for the cursing)

To end this, let me just say that it's simply a joy to find old-fashioned, hand-drawn animation surviving into the present day. Technically, Persepolis can't compare to the modern pixel films. Artistically, it bloody shames them all! Satrapi and Paronnaud have created something rough-shaped and real, with a narrative authority that has fallen out of use in our pre-digested digital age. This, some say, is how you're supposed to tell a story - by bearing witness and refusing to skimp on the details. This is how you start a revolution. This is how you make art. A masterpiece!

Giuseppe Tornatore is one of those names that every true Film lover should recognize and bow to, when heard. An unusual filmmaker that always cared more about making good films rather than lots. The Unknown is only his 8th film, six years after Malèna and nineteen after his masterpiece, Cinema Paradiso. After directing Monica Bellucci in 2000, Tornatore dedicated himself completely to the big project on the Leningrad siege left behind by Sergio Leone after his death. The Unknown marks a break from the overwhelming research work for the still-active project and it is surprisingly stunning.



While Malèna had on Lajos Koltai's heavenly Cinematography, on Morricone's Score and Monica Bellucci's physical and acting qualities its strongest points and Cinema Paradiso had... well, nothing but qualities, The Unknown is also nearly flawless. In fact, I think I'll risk it and say that it is flawless. Cinema Paradiso is and will always be Tornatore's masterpiece, but the fact is that the man made another one.

Set in a north-eastern contemporary Italian city, The Unknown follows the trials and tribulations of Irena (russian actress Ksenia Rappoport, in a fantastic performance), a young, 'unknown' Ukrainian woman looking for a job. We immediately understand that she's trying to run away from a troubled past, as a slaved prostitute in southern Italy. She settles in an old and pricey flat, and soon starts working as a cleaning woman in a rich and distinct building situated in front of hers.

The distant people around Irena start to embrace and accept her, and while we watch her cleaning a big, dirty spiral staircase, she gets more and more in touch with a nanny (Piera Degli Esposti) who is working for a family of rich goldsmiths, the Adacher (Claudia Gerini and Pierfrancesco Favino), taking care of their young daughter (the adorable Clara Dossena), who has a rare neurological disease that deprives her of any defensive reaction. We soon realize that her slowly building closeness with the family isn't just a coincidence...



The film is structured around a duality. The timeline which separates the present life of Irena from the old one is physically correlated to the division between the two houses: her house, and the house she works in. All the dramatic development of the plot, and the violent reemergence of Irena's troubled past, lies in the interchange and interrelation between these two dimensions.

Throughout the film constant flashbacks of her past appear randomy. It's like we're seeing two different stories: one in the past and one in the present. Irena may very well be one of the most complex characters I've ever seen. One minute she seems 'normal' enough and the next her actions are completely vicious to say the least (like throwing the nanny down the stairs so she can have her job). Still, we can't help to feel nothing but empathy for her.

Labeled by many as an Italian noir, the film is a complex and bizarre fusion of genres. A distinct noirish out-of-the-past scheme is obvious, but The Unknown is less noir than thriller, only, with an added melodramatic touch. The hitchcockain feel to it is undeniable and Tornatore does what any filmmaker on this planet should aspire: he brings back the essence of Cinema's golden age - the 40's/50's - mixing the typically italian full blown melodrama of directors like Raffaello Matarazzo and Vittorio De Sica with the less usual exploitation and perversions in the form of thriller of Pasolini and Dario Argento. Still, his touch is recognizable in every single shot. The ending, for instance, is of a brilliance and beauty that I find hard to describe by mere words.

What makes The Unknown such a clever and utterly gripping thriller is the fact that we never know where the film is going. Irena's intentions are never clear to us. We know something is going on, we slowly try to figure it out, but the plot's complexity and density is such that we're not 'allowed' to know more than we're supposed to before it's time. Again, Sir Alfred Hitchcock's legacy at its best.

The Unknown is as a joy to listen as it is to watch. Mr. Ennio Morricone's Score is fabulous. One of the best he ever composed. Goes from a sweet, sad and mellow melody to a delirious, mad and powerful sound of shrieking violins that will immediately remind you of the shower scene from Psycho. I wonder if 2008 will be the year in which the Academy will finally open their eyes and give the man a bloody Oscar...

This isn't a semi-long, detailed review. For one I don't have the time and besides, pretty much everything there is to say has been said. Pixar's greatest achievement to date. A lesson of animation and filmmaking.

Best film of 2007 so far, side by side with Hot Fuzz.

"Do you want anything from the shop? "



They're back! Oh, they're SO back... And by 'they' I obviously mean Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Three (and if you ask me, too many) years after Shaun of the Dead. No comparations intented, Hot Fuzz is as brilliant as Shaun... And this, come from me, means alot, considering the fact that their previous film is one of my favourite comedies of all times and, in my personal opinion, one of the most brilliant ever made.

With Hot Fuzz the effect is the same: laugh, laugh and more laugh! It's like they took those characters (Shaun and Ed) and placed them in a totally different situation, with different jobs and names. Our reaction when we look at those two guys is the same! The spirit is the same. There are no zombies, but there are insane, typical small town people who kill others, making it look like accidents, so their village may continue to be the one with the lowest crime rate and therefore the 'safest' one in England... As senseless as dead people walking? Maybe.

Even though it might look that way, Hot Fuzz isn't a spoof film. Just like Shaun of the Dead wasn't either. Well, at least not entirely. Of course, there are some elements that can definitely lead to that conclusion. Shaun, for instance, was released in the same month of the suprisingly good remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead. I guess what I mean is that I don't think Wright and Pegg's intention was ever to ridiculize, 'make fun' (even though, literally speaking, that's what they ended up doing) of both Zombie and Cop/Action films. I'd say it's more like a tribute, one given by someone who, like so many people, grew up watching 'sacred monsters' like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. And of course, it couldn't not explore the clichés, all those typical scenes and dialogues that we've seen like a million times before.



What can I say? There's just something about these guys... Once put together, only one thing's for sure: something brilliant and hilarious will come out of those minds! Chemistry like that doesn't just happen. It's easy to figure out that those guys know each other for a long, long time. I'm not sure, but they've certainly been working together for at least 10 years. I can easily predict, as for Comedy is concerned, that these two screenwriters/director/actor are the future of British Cinema! I know that if they were to make one film a year I'd see every single one of them! Without blinking.

Nicholas Angel: "I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a police officer, except for the summer of 1979 when I wanted to be Kermit the frog. I remember when I was five, my uncle Derek bought me a police pedal car. There wasn't a minute of the day I spent out of that car. I went round - arresting kids much bigger than me. I got beaten up a lot, but it didn't stop me." Danny Butterman: "Man, he sounds like a great guy!" Nicholas Angel: "Actually he was arrested for selling drugs to students, probably bought the pedal car with the proceeds." Danny Butterman: "What a cunt!"

Jean-Dominique Bauby: "I decided to stop pitying myself. Other than my eye, two things aren't paralysed: my imagination and my memory."



In theory, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of those film projects that would seem hugely improbable in any universe, least of all one with creatures called investors and distributors. It's based on the life and near death and subsequent artistic rebirth of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the roguish, high-flying editor of the French magazine Elle and father of two whose life changed instantaneously when, at age 43 and at the height of his success, he suffered a massive stroke. Weeks later he would awaken from a coma to the devastating news that he was totally paralysed and forever "locked in", a prisoner of his own body.

Jean-Do, as Bauby is nicknamed, likened his new reality to floating within the iron cage of a diving bell deep under the sea, under tremendous pressure and out of contact with the outside world. He was hopeless and helpless and spiritually dead. Until, that is, he found a way out of his trap, a means of releasing all the fury and disbelief to discover the raw wisdom and biting humour that lived within him all along. Bauby's story became a worldwide best-seller when it was published in 1997, and ultimately inspired this third feature film from Julian Schnabel, who previously directed Basquiat and the hauntingly beautiful Before Night Falls.

What makes The Diving Bell and The Butterfly unique is that Schnabel has taken an idea that, while perfect for literature, seems antithetical to the cinema and turned it into a thing of absolute beauty. The story of an interior life, forged by a terrible medical condition, that is essentially an act of self-reinvention. After a gorgeous opening credit sequence which features a montage of antique x-rays, Schnabel immediately disorients with the camera, putting the viewer in the first person role of Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) as he awakens from a weeks-long coma. The camera lens drifts in and out of focus as Bauby is probed and questioned by a battery of medical professionals while his unarticulated thoughts are used as dialogue. The immediate response is empathy as the audience experiences the feeling of disorientation, but it is not without purpose; Schnabel uses his opening maneuver to shape the narrative purpose of the film.



This is Bauby's story exclusively and as he learns the tools he needs to communicate the rich complexity of his inner-life, the film's style and technique grows with him and our experience as an audience gets richer and richer the more we experience Bauby's development. Suffering from "locked-in syndrome", Bauby is essentially an artistic mind trapped in a severely debilitated body - like a diver sinking in a diving bell. Bauby is vividly aware of his circumstances and the world around him. His motion, however, is limited to the use of one eye and, after some work with a therapist, he begins to communicate by listening to a series of letters and blinking to indicate the letter he wishes to use. Using this brilliant technique, he is able to slowly articulate his thoughts to both his loved ones and his translator, unleashing an inner-world of deep feeling and poetry that Schnabel uses as a launching pad for his own beautiful cinematic ideas about the world of the artist's imagination.

And here, what seems the most terrifying of experiences for me, personally - the deep physical isolation of being unable to move or speak - becomes fertile ground for some of the film's most poetic and beautiful passages; When Bauby speaks of the way he imagines his own former physical appearance, Schnabel uses old stills of Marlon Brando horsing around (and Bauby's voice yells, as if to Schnabel himself, "That's Marlon Brando!"). When Bauby discusses his own mortality, Schnabel gives us images of glaciers collapsing into frozen seas, a gentle reminder that we all face extinction and death. Which is, in the end, the beautiful acceptance at the heart of the film; The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is a lesson in living and dying, of being born and of being forced to let go. What makes this film so much more meaningful to me than Schnabel's two previous films is that he has inverted this idea and arrived at the same place; We see Bauby's interior life re-born, an artist forged in a kind of physical death with a new palette of experience blossoming inside of him.

Watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is fascinating because you see how the art of Schnabel's film pays homage to Jean-Do's. The film is visually ravishing, saturated with images that move from shaky and out-of-focus to haunting and meditative (there are clear echoes of Bergman's Cries and Whispers and Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad present) to dizzying blasts of colour and movement. Like Schnabel's paintings, the film feels tactile and close to the skin.

The film was originally set up at Universal, as an Enlish-language film with Johnny Depp to star, but as Schnabel put it at a press junket recently, "I guess Johnny got busy with the pirate thing". The whole concept of the film then changed, from studio vehicle to a small, French-language project cast almost entirely with French name actors, among them the fantastic Mathieu Amalric (the next Bond villain) in the lead role, Emmanuelle Signer, last seen in La Vie en Rose and in her husband Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon and Frantic, as Bauby's betrayed yet devoted (and stunningly beautiful) ex-wife; the ever-watchable French-Canadian Marie-Josée Croze (The Barbarian Invasions) as a therapist who helps guide Jean-Do out of his "prison"; Marina Hands as the current girlfriend; Jean-Pierre Cassel (to whom the film is dedicated) and the biggest name of all, Max von Sydow, who plays the small but unforgettable role of Jean-Do's aging father.

It must be said that, for all of Schnabel's best intentions and the brilliance of his formal technique, without the central performance given by Amalric, I am not sure if the film would have worked. Thankfully, we'll never know. I must confess that, in usual cinematic circumstances, I consider able-bodied actors playing disabled people to be a sort of Oscar-baiting show-off act that sacrifices empathy for fake, stagy emotional "moments". I never felt comfortable watching that. In this case, Amalric is only able to use about 75% of his face to deliver one of the most heart-wrenching performances I have ever seen. He says more with his single eye than many actors can using an arsenal of technique. In a stand-out scene in the film, Bauby must communicate his sadness to his mistress with only his long-time partner (and the mother of his children) present to translate for him; Amalric's eye delivers the weight of both the gratitude and hurt of the moment with a depth and clarity that cuts to the bone.

Of course, there are those who will say that Schnabel's images have romanticized the situation (and Bauby's faith in his own imagination) at the expense of the loss and grief at the heart of Bauby's experience, but I thoroughly disagree; What makes this story possible as a film is Schnabel's dedication to matching Bauby's own poetry shot for shot, word for word. In lesser hands, I could imagine a cautionary juxtaposition of Bauby's days at the superficial world of Elle Magazine played against some sort of punitive post-stroke interiority. Thank God Schnabel is far too great an artist for such moralizing; In my opinion, this film is a near-perfect achievement in the art of cinematic empathy.

Without an implicit recognition of the beauty in the world, a beauty matched equally by the horror of his condition and his own death, Bauby's work would be without meaning, and perhaps he would never have been able to complete the herculean task of composing his book. How could anyone create beauty under such circumstances if they didn't experience it deeply? In his writing, Bauby was fighting for beauty, for the validity of the inner-life of words and ideas, and Schnabel's visual translation is at once his deeply personal interpretation of the spirit of Bauby's work as well as a profoundly moving presentation of the writer's hurt and loss. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a heartbreaking celebration of the human will and it is a superlative accomplishment. A fabulous film.

"They all deserve to die. Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why! Because in all of the whole human race, Mrs. Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two. There's the one staying put in his proper place and one with his foot in the other one's face. Look at me, Mrs Lovett! Look at you! No, we all deserve to die... Even you, Mrs Lovett, even I! Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief. For the rest of us death will be a relief. We all deserve to die..."



The delight one gains from watching Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tim Burton's film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's acclaimed stage musical about the legendary barber who kills his clients by slitting their throats before mixing them into the meat pies of his landlady, can be summarized by the film's penultimate moment: a crimson-black tableau of terrible and undefinable beauty, morbid and irresistible all at the same time.

The tale of the titular demon barber has evolved from news item of unverified sources to rumour-worthy grotesquery before turning into a literary work, into a film, into a fine musical play by Sondheim, and finally, this terrifyingly gorgeous film, a product of a perfect marriage of material and artists, of the murderous barber's distorted story of human depravity set into song by Sondheim with his astounding meshing of cords, melodies and lyrics, and Burton's distinguished visual assuredness, narrative competence, and thematic consistency. Like that penultimate tableau, the entirety of Sweeney Todd dwells in the vicious, the cruel, the absurd, and the macabre yet still remains an undeniable thing of beauty.

Burton's aesthetic style willingly veers from pretty into grotesque territory as Industrial-age London with its skies darkened with smut and smoke seems to be forever drenched in a grey and sun-deprived haze. The centrepiece of this enunciated gloom is Mrs. Lovett's building in Fleet Street with its ground level used as a meat pie store, characterized by an unhealthy mix of dust, questionable meat, flour, and cockroaches, and its second floor renovated to be Sweeney Todd's barbershop, with a lone chair surrounded by glass from a ceiling of dusty windows overlooking the bleak neighbourhood, to the solitary mirror, broken into dozens of pieces thus reflecting only fractured images of their faces. The fitting occupants of the decrepit building are Todd (Johnny Depp) and Ms. Lovett (Helena Bonham-Carter) whose appearances outdo their already stylized environment of moist and dimly coloured cobblestone streets and dour living quarters.

Their faces are deathly pale with shadows clinging under their seemingly empty eyes. Their looks are absurdly distracting, Lovett's hair is in perpetual chaos while Todd's is made more prominent by a streak of white, further emphasizing the obsession that has consumed him. Their wardrobes are composed of dusty and tattered clothes coloured in shades of black, white, grey and dull variations of lighter and more active hues, hinting of what they probably were in a previous life, possibly a decent barber's uniform or a lady's formal dress. Todd and Lovett's present state however is purged of whatever remnant of humanity they once had. They are doomed and hopeless, walking monsters still among the living for their villainous objectives: for Todd, the violent deaths of his oppressors and for Lovett, the belated emotional and monetary rewards of her unrequited adoration for Todd.

Purists might prefer the powerful vocalizations of George Hearn and Angela Lansbury as more appropriate for Sondheim's music. However, the film has Todd and Lovett conspire on their wicked plans in whispers, careful that none of their plans escape the confines of the barbershop. Similarly, they sing the same way making Depp's raspy tenor, sometimes escalating into tortured bursts of vocals, and Bonham-Carter's rickety soprano, uncomfortably resting on the fringes of Sondheim's complicated notes, surprisingly pitch-perfect for the cinematic characters Burton envisioned them to be, otherworldly semblances of their depleted humanities. As a result of such consistency, these characters maintain the tremendous burdens their little frail and near-dead souls carry as they shift from dialogue to song.

There's no question that Todd has fallen far from grace after he has been unduly exiled by his nemesis Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). His redemption is improbable most especially after his "Epiphany" where he becomes convinced of the little value of life. Todd, as Burton has visualized him, exists for one solitary purpose: to rid London of Turpin and his henchman Beadle (Timothy Spall) and the completion of such is for him his salvation. In comparison, Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), the young sailor who falls in love with Todd's daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) who opens the film with a song about his experiences travelling with his large eyes reflecting the starry London night, seems to have landed in London, crossing paths with Todd and later with his daughter fortuitously for another purpose, to rescue Johanna and find a future with her. During Anthony's opening verse of optimistic wonderment, Todd's face enters the frame to caution him. Their two faces are juxtaposed emphasizing the differences of these two men despite their similarity in goal. Anthony is wide-eyed with hope while Todd's eyes are blank with his desperate murderous objective.

Lovett, on the other hand, has Toby (Ed Sanders), the little boy she rescues from the clutches of Italian barber Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen). Both of them are exemplars of devotion: Lovett's is misguided and fuelled both by greed and desire for Todd while Toby's is sourced from loyalty and innocence. In the song "Not While I'm Around," the duet where Toby pledges to protect Lovett from evil referring to Todd whom he discovers has ill motives, the differences again become apparent: Toby sings with angelic precision while Lovett, now accompanied by discordant violins, warbles the same lyrics but doesn't quite strike you as harmonious or sincere to the noble promises of the song.

These thematically-driven relationships between the characters, well above the more obvious narratively-driven ones, are just some of the further observations propelled by Burton's meticulous direction. Sweeney Todd, I believe, is a wonderful adaptation of the musicale. Burton fills the film with lifeless objects that reflect the atmosphere of hopelessness and depravity: dusky windows, broken mirrors, smoky chimneys, wet cobblestone streets. More importantly though is the fact that Burton understands that his film adaptation will be utterly worthless against the stage production without utilizing the feats of cinema. Thus, on top of the immaculate production design and Sondheim's already perfect music, Burton populates his film with faces, in close-up detailing the paleness and coldness of their manufactured features, or reflected from the broken mirror or the clear shaving blade, or seen through the dusty windows, or blurred from a distance, or morbidly covered with and turned indistinguishable by his victim's blood. Burton also puts emphasizes on his actors' eyes, sometimes putting the burden of evoking gargantuan emotions and shaded morals just through the depth of a stare.

These fine cinematic touches make the psychology much deeper than what the narrative entails. It adds a certain sexual other than maternal connection between Toby and Lovett when Toby started pledging to protect the latter. It gives you a glimpse into Todd's depraved mental state when out of frustration, he jumps into a fantasy where he starts inviting people into his barber for a shave talking of finding salvation in the fulfilment of his vendetta, before flashing back to reality where he is far from his goal and is alone with Lovett. It pumps Todd's reunion with his shaving blades with a tinge of perversity as he longingly looks, cross-eyed in concentration, at his gleaming metal "friends." The intimacy and unholy communions between Todd and Lovett, stranded in their Fleet Street building, is silently turbulent and internally troubling.

Much more than maintaining allegiance with its theatrical roots (as most other film adaptations of popular musicals) by incorporating the giant gestures (compensating for the stage's inability to transform the theatre into a visual replica of the atmosphere of Todd's historic era) and the perfect singing voices as only Broadway or West End would allow, Burton stays true to his being a filmmaker and embellishes the material with just the right details like a surrealistic final tableau, hushed conversations, the imperfect yet apt singing, the dozen fountains of blood inspired by the finest of Italian gialli, eventually turning what already is great into something impressive and memorable.

Mrs. Mak: "What if I told you... I hate you?
Mr. Yee: I would believe you. We weren't like this three years ago.
Mrs. Mak: I hate you.
Mr. Yee: I said I believed you! I haven't believed anyone in a long time. Let me hear it again.
Mrs. Mak: You must be very lonely.
Mr. Yee: But I'm still alive."



It's not much of a stretch to call Ang Lee one of the masters of today's world cinema. With his penchant for spinning short stories into sprawling, emotional cinematic fabrics, he again turns his gaze towards the East for Lust, Caution. Adapted by Lee and long-time collaborators James Schamus and Hui-Ling Wang from an Eileen Chang novella of the same name, Lust, Caution is yet another example of the Taiwanese director's ability to shift gears and genres with an incredible ease. In this case he's abandoned the hills of Wyoming in favour of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong during the 1940s. (I mean, what other filmmaker can do that?) There's still that trace of forbidden love, though most of it's buried beneath a tangled web of espionage and brutally energetic copulation.

The film begins in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the year 1942, as a quartet of well-to-do wives chat ceaselessly during a marathon game of Mahjong. Don't expect all of the information that's thrown about to sink in at first, as Lee and company spare no time in allowing the audience to catch up. What does cut through the small talk like a shining Samurai sword is that there's obviously something behind the furtive glances shared between the shy player Mrs. Mak (Tang Wei, in what is one of the greatest acting débuts in recent memory) and her host's husband, the enigmatic Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu Wai). It's all the more interesting that subsequently the young Mrs. Mak seems to call out a hit on the man following a long session of shadow play at a local café.

Thus the film quickly and subtly jumps back in time to the late '30s as Mrs. Mak appears as a first-year university student named Wong Chia Chi. She's quickly pulled into the magnetic fold of Kuang Yu Min (Lee-Hom Wang), a politically enthusiastic youth who channels his frustrations into dramatic theatre. Soon a group of like-minded students begin touring Hong Kong with their anti-Japanese message disguised as popular entertainment. When the emotionally charged finale to their play inspires the audience to leap to their feet with cheers of nationalist pride, Kuang begins to dream of bigger fish.

The first catch being the supremely cautious Mr. Yee, a volatile man who tortures rebels and sells out his own people to the Japanese. Or so Kuang says. The Yee we meet is decidedly paranoid about his safety, but it's not until much later that we find evidence of his feral nature. In order to gain access to the inner sanctum of Yee, the theatre group moves to Hong Kong full time, spending one member's money on an expensive flat posing as the home of the non-existent Mr. and Mrs. Mak. It's the latter character who charms the target and his wife, and she is swiftly embraced as a shopping partner and fellow gaming enthusiast.

There's an unseen eye or two focused on just about every character, but Yee's primary focus is on the unusually confident Mrs. Mak (and on her figure as well). She's the only person who shows no fear in the gaze of the beast, and following a quiet dinner together she's convinced that she can infiltrate his circle as a lover. Things never turn out quite as expected, for while there is an eventual murder, it's an unexpected killing bred from necessity. Lee stages it with unflinching realism, as young members of this pack of human wolves repeatedly stick a man with a straight razor and await his Caesar-like demise. That scene - those who've seen the film know what I mean - is horrifyingly intense. It feels like you're the one being stabbed - or doing the stabbing.

There's also the highly un-erotic sex scenes shared between Wong and one of her fellow rebels (who's chosen for being the male member with the most experience, which means having shagged a hooker once). It's meant as a training exercise prior to her expected union with Yee, and it's another fascinating moment in the evolution of her character. Early on as the plot is being seeded, she quite truthfully avows that she is not afraid to commit to the planned murder of a man. She's not frightened of what should terrify her, and when she later returns to Shanghai and laments her life it's not because she's been traumatized by the events in Hong Kong - it's because she misses them. And furthermore, there's the unsettling notion that she misses the target himself - Yee.

It's easy to understand the allure of their failed coup. The stage-trained rebels were essentially putting on a play during the entire scenario - pretending to be people they weren't and spending money that wasn't theirs. When Kuang suddenly reappears in Wong's life three years later in Shanghai, offering her a second chance to finish what they had started, she can't wait to return to the thrill of the hunt. The rest of the film is an exploration of her loss of innocence and subsequent maturation, as it's a sobering wake up call to the real world sorrows of dedicating your life to an illegal cause.

Kuang and Wong find themselves under the employ of the real people's revolution, in which there is no room for youthful optimism. Wong is told to readopt her stage name of Mrs. Mak and re-infiltrate the lair of the lion, which she carries out with ease. Yet when she finally lures Yee into an extramarital liaison, it's not quite what she expects, as her mousy attempts at flirtation are shredded by Yee's punishing rendition of 'lovemaking'. In spite of the animosity this encounter arouses, both creatures are repeatedly drawn to one another. It's during his time with Mrs. Mak that he discovers something more within the monster. It's in this segment that Tang Wei's performance is truly sublime, as she becomes an utterly conflicted character, experiencing a world wherein the line between hatred and love becomes irreparably blurred. Likewise, the old Thespian master Leung gives a creepy, knock-out performance derived less from dialogue than a series of gravitas-soaked stares.

Lust, Caution has, since Venice, gained attention for its explicit sex scenes. Several are not only graphic, but also violent, illustrating Yee's cruelty and confusion (he's desperate to feel powerful, much like Wong) as well as Wong's need to feel intimate with him, even at the cost of her well-being. But these scenes also serve a thematic purpose, in the questions they raise about what's "real" in sex performed for films that are not designated "pornography". At the same time, the sex scenes provide moments of sincere connection for Wong and Yee: they see one another as "real" when they engage in sweaty, acrobatic acts, taking emotional risks they don't take at any other time. Vulnerable and aggressive, their closeness in these moments is unsafe but also, for them, the most safe they feel.

In these scenes, the sex is plot, not just a break for lush scoring and pretty bodies on display, as it is in most films. This plot, so urgent and pained, dooms both partners. When Wong at last articulates her suffering to Kuang and their resistance cell leader, Old Wu (Chung Hua Tou), they can't begin to absorb what she's telling them. "For an agent", insists Old Wu, "there's only one thing: loyalty." Unlike Yee, who forces his way "into [her] heart", her so-called compatriots are visibly perplexed by her description of the sex and her own violent fantasies (she imagines shooting Yee herself, "his blood and brains all over me"). Old Wu asserts, "Keep him hooked and keep me informed."

The locations also have that perfect level of verisimilitude, and one feels right at home amidst the multicultural melting pot of 1940s China. While the colour palette (lensed by Rodrigo Prieto, a regular DP of Alejandro González Iñárritu, slowly becoming one of Lee's too) is more muted than one would suspect (there are no garish reds on display), there's still plenty of detail in the numerous shadows. Lee is obviously enamoured with nature as a storytelling device (see The Ice Storm for a start), and apart from the usual use of rainstorms, he routinely uses the sounds of the natural world's creatures to accent just about every scene in Lust, Caution. Birds and crickets all donate a sort of background commentary on these activities of the human kind.

The sound mix is phenomenal, and while the film is largely derived of quiet discussions there are many other sonic elements that bring it all to life. Alexandre Desplat's haunting score helps: quiet for the most part and tantalizing when it needs to be. There will be many complaints about the film's long running time (157 minutes) and slow pace, but Lust, Caution is a film that you have to dissolve yourself into like a sugar cube over absinthe. The emotional turmoil of these characters is so involving in itself that the addition of bombastic external events would surely only dilute the purity of this wonderful film. It's one of Ang Lee's best, and one of the finest films of 2007.

"If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed."

By definition, an auteur is a filmmaker whose works reflect their own experiences, viewpoints, and ideologies. Sean Penn, a well established and highly praised method actor, has certainly joined this prestigious guild, although Into the Wild is his fourth directorial effort. Based on the book by Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild tells the true story of Christopher McCandless, a decorated college graduate who clandestinely donated his life savings to charity upon finishing school and seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth. Given Penn's defiant persona toward the American establishment, perhaps nobody else is better suited at telling the story of McCandless, a young man destined for corporate success who wanted nothing more than to avoid it at all cost.



The opening shots of Into the Wild alternate between tight close-ups and long wide-shots of the convergence of humankind and nature. Worn wood, a train gliding along its metal track through wilderness, and spanning vistas of Alaskan wild, where McCandless spends the final days of his tragically short life. No human bodies are shown during these opening moments. They consist primarly of immobile cameras capturing the world around them. It's only appropriate that the opening scenes of the film juxtapose nature and artifice, indicating a clear division between the planet and those who have colonized it.

This contrast drove Chris McCandless. It drove him away from relationships with people and with the cultural norms of society. In the wild and on the road, he seeked to reconnect with a primal state of nature, one that has inspired the evocative, poetic words of Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Jack London. But this state of mind is one that 'civilized' people have gradually forsaken. To his benefit and perhaps his detriment, McCandless lived with passion for life as it exists in nature. In his trying to connect with the wild, a journey we all wish to take, wether we realize it or not, but cannot gather the courage, McCandless failed to embrace human connection in the same way. Into the Wild examines and romanticizes that passion, and its relationship to nature and human connection, through the life of this young man. With lyrical poeticism, it poses difficult questions about humanity and nature while also allowing the viewer to feel that very lifeforce and question its own existence.

Combining sentimental narrative/cinematic conventions (slow motion shots, voiceover narration) with an almost Herzogian observation of people and nature, emphasizing the disconnect between the two, Into the Wild is accesible as standard biopic material but also oddly detached in individual moments, never failing to acknowledge the difficult implications of rejecting society. Despite digging into Chris' troubled past with his family, Penn invites multiple perspectives on McCandless and his decisions and motivations, but he rejects a singular explanation for Chris' inner rebellion, pain, and passion. He is not out to explain why Chris McCandless was who he was. Instead, Penn advocates a more inquistive approach to understanding Chris. The film is unassuming, but obsessed with the passion that filled its central character. It may romanticize him but it doesn't blindly admire him.

The film certainly finds flaw in Chris, it doesn't raise him to the status of hero. But on a deeper level it states that this young man saw the world in a totally different way, that underneath his refusal and sometimes inability to connect with people is a searching soul who embraced abstract feeling in ways all of us ought to in some way. McCandless may have been somewhat pompous and even hard to love, but he lived his life with an unmatched openness and passion, and he was better for it. Few among us in a mechanical and digital age have come so close to that void, and yet, somehow, it's buried deep within us. McCandless' quest to destroy the means for being controlled and manipulated by social convention (expressed in the image of him burning his money) echoes deep within the collective human psyche, and Penn's honest portrayal of his leading character is illuminating, inspiring, even maddening in its penetration of such depths.

It's never really possible to strike ourselves from our pasts or our participation in the increasingly artificial social practices and institutions. But Chris' bold rejection of these things in such an extreme manner, while not entirely successful, is incendiary. Perhaps we all shouldn't give away our life savings and destroy our social security cards, but Chris' insistence on the outright rejection of the institutional means of power that control our interests is a powerful symbol, a plea on the part of artists to wake up from quiet complacency. It's a call to act, to challenge systems of authority, and to openly question and think about that which constitutes our being in this culture and this world.

In the form of Christopher McCandless, Sean Penn is given a character who shares his disgust of American politics and its policies. Rather than emphasizing Chris' disconnect with human society, Penn finds as many moving moments in Chris' encounters with the people he met on the road as he does when Chris is alone in the wilderness. The tragedy emerges out of the film's romanticizing of nature and human interaction, where Chris is only consciously concerned with the first. And while Penn frames this lack of concern for human relationships as McCandless' undoing, he seems to acknowledge at the same time that only the person who braves alienation from those around him can fully grasp a connection to the Earth.

And there lies Penn's greatest achievement, they way I see it. His main character died alone, like an animal, and believed that human interaction was secondary. Yet, some of the most fascinating and beautiful moments of the film involve McCandless' encounters with the people he meets on the road. Wether it's the hippie couple who give him a ride on their RV (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker), the lonely old man he inspires (Hal Holbrook), the talented teenage girl who becomes enamored with him (Kristen Stewart) or the typically cool small-town guy who gives him a job (Vince Vaughn), they all seem to fall in love with Chris instantly. The earnest interaction between him and the friends he makes along the way always seem to affect both parties in a useful way, and his free spirit and utter sincerity cause them to re-evaluate their own lives.

Emile Hirsch - who, I must say, I never really saw as a particulary good actor - gives a fabulous performance as the sly, adventurous protagonist, and proves, not only that I was wrong, but that his talent is for real. He breathtakingly channels the spirit of McCandless as the idealist young man that he was, and even does the best Christian Bale impression I remember watching, by losing 42 pounds for the role. Although the film is a one-man show for most of its 140-minute runtime, the supporting cast is flawless, including William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden as Chris' parents, Keener playing a very sweet and touching character and of course, 82-year-old Hal Holbrook' tender and, for some, heartbreaking performance.

The cinematography is absolutely stunning, capturing the almost unbelievable beauty of the North American landscape. Sometimes it's easy to forget that there's still such beauty left in our modern industrialized world, especially in a country such as the US, but Penn's camera-work evokes the wonder effortlessly without ever feeling fake or forced. The hot air blowing over a desert, the frigid landscape of Alaska, or the cool blows of wind wrapping themselves around Chris as he stands on a mountaintop are all exquisite images of the untouched beauty of nature. If you add to that Eddie Vedder's Academy-despized original soundtrack, with simply haunting songs, you get Into the Wild, a film whose beauty isn't challenged by more than a couple of films from last year.

Into the Wild isn't the best film of 2007, but it's the most human and organic. Penn locates the tensions of being human, by making us see that those tensions come from the acknowledgment of both the natural and artificial elements that contribute to our being. We're the result of that strange collision of forces. Inextricably bound to and seperated from nature and each other, we can take in the spectre of another's beauty and be fulfilled by the purely intangible feeling of connecting, be it to nature or to another person. Yet we'll never able to be organically apart of that with which we connect. Penn is perplexed, maddened, and inspired by McCandless' story, and it comes through in every composition of this tragically hopeful and gorgeous film.

Unlike Christopher McCandless himself, the film finds just as much sublimity in the connecting to others as it does to connecting to nature. By the end, we understand that McCandless' tragedy isn't that he died at the young age of 24. It's that he realized all too late that human connection is equally constitutive of our being as the lands and waters from which we emerged.

"I... I Need to know who he is. I... I need to stand there, I need to look him in the eye and I need to know that it's him."

Arguably the most underrated (read: zero Academy Award nominations) film of the fantastic year of 2007, Zodiac is quite possibly David Fincher's most mature film ever. I always thought of Fincher as a concept director; his films are always cool because he exploits the possibilities of unique scenarios - Se7en, with serial killings attached to the seven capital sins; Fight Club, with that underground organization and its revolutionary ideas; the underwhelming Panic Room, that happens within the confines of a residence made unique by the existence of a security room. All these films are carried by their concepts rather than by involving or thought-provoking narratives and characters.



In Zodiac, Fincher has finally gotten past the juvenilia of concept films. Moreover, trademark Fincher visual touches were outgrown or perhaps have evolved into something more substantial, more pertinent. Those flowing mobile shots (mostly from the perspective of inanimate objects) have been sprinkled in Fincher's entire filmography, yet only in Zodiac do they acquire a meaning that goes beyond the statement of "cool." For example, when Fincher's camera follows the mail-cart through the San Francisco Chronicle's offices, it doesn't evoke that annoying feeling of mere gimmickry but instead, carries with it the implication of the mobility and perpetuality of communication, and its after-effects on society.

There are four characters to take note of in Zodiac. The first is the serial killer who calls himself Zodiac, whose ominous frame we barely see at the film's first violent murder; shooting with absolute gusto and delight, absent any remorse or conscious or intelligent effort to finish off the murder he started. The second is cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) who works for the San Francisco Chronicle and considers reading and books (which are practically the same thing) as his diversions in life. The third is Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) who is tasked, along with his long-time partner William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) to solve the Zodiac killings. The fourth character is the most memorable one, columnist Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.), news writer for the Chronicle.

Through these four characters, Fincher delineates humanity's capability to obsess, which is practically what Zodiac is all about. The serial killer is compelled to traverse the lengths of California to murder innocent victims; particularly obsessed with the idea stolen from the classic 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game. That perception that humanity is both the hunter and the hunted compels him to play both roles; first, by seeking out easy victims and second, by planting clues and inviting participants (through the media) in his own hunt where he is the clever prey.

The participants in the serial killer's game are of course, the police and the amateur detective who gets so pre-occupied with the puzzle that it becomes an unhealthy obsession - quite possibly equal to that of the Zodiac killer. The opportunist in the entire endeavour is Paul Avery, who claims the entire Zodiac fiasco as his journalistic masterpiece - there's no intention to solve the mystery, just enough fuel to get his monopoly on the enterprise going. Through the interplay of these great obsessions, a phenomenon is created; one in which the media, the police, the perpetrators, and the general public are intertwined in genuine confusion and paranoia.

It's all brilliant stuff and Fincher tries his best not to overdo the brilliance. Every thing's kept in an air of vagueness; It keeps you uneasy and in constant wonder if the Zodiac mystery has been solved, or if there really is a Zodiac killer, or are the presumptions that there is a single killer and the clues connect with each other a mere result of red tape, creativity, and self-assured conclusions.

There's no actual resolution in the mysteries of the Zodiac killer (not in a legal or factual way), although it seems that the four characters' obsessions have been resolved in various denominations. The paranoia has faded but the legacy of the killer floats in the infinite world of media and communication, to the satisfaction of the hunt-crazed killer. While watching the film, I realized how amazing it was that the actual man who murdered those people and sent those letters might have actually been seated in an theatre somewhere watching this film.

The expected lavish Fincher brutality is used effectively here, as we see most of the killings in their frightening detail, and probably none more unsettling than the murder of a young couple by a lake in broad daylight. However, Fincher mostly breaks free of his usual atmosphere to create a doggedly realistic true-crime story. The details flood in in a seemingly random order, and the depiction of police procedure and back-room discussions among newspaper staff are deliberate, careful, and believable. Besides, Fincher's subject is not ultimately the violence of the crimes, but how the case comes to shake the public and envelop the lives of the cops and reporters who have become ensnared in solving the mysteries and soothing the public's apprehensions - none suffering the effects more clearly than Graysmith. He goes from being a bright-eyed, clumsy back-office lackey to a jumpy, haunted shadow of a man.

Zodiac is also about how the killer craftily uses the mass media to amplify the awful impact of his crimes, as well as their shocking randomness, to the point where it's not even certain if all the crimes he is taking credit for are his - an idea that bears a lot of resonance in our information age. He transforms himself into a legend, an intangible, imaginative figure of brutality and evil, and hence becomes even more uncatchable.

Finally, Fincher's intensely controlled stylistic flourishes perfectly re-create the pre-digital age of the 1970s - the cars, the architecture, the music, the casual smoking in bars. Fincher exercises such strong control over plot, style, and pacing that Zodiac almost feels a bit stuffy at times, but his perfectionism works rivetingly for the most part, the ornate style and the step-by-step realism of the storytelling, the gruesome murders and their psychologically elaborate aftermath and the nifty media-age commentary resulting in an uncommonly skilful and absorbing story of obsession, murder, and real mystery.

The performances (excepting my Gyllenhaal quibbles) are across-the-board fantastic, and there are both scares and suspense aplenty, even for those already fairly familiar with the case. More than that, though, Fincher has made a film about real murders that delivers those chills without sensationalizing or trivializing the victims. They are acknowledged as real people and given respect; one of the film's stand-out scenes - the murder of Cecelia Shepard and attempted murder of Bryan Hartnell - does so much to humanize those two people and make them authentic and complex that it could stand on its own as a brilliantly observant short film. It's a rare treat, for those of us fascinated by true-crime stories while somewhat embarrassed by that predilection, to walk out of a film about a serial killer and feel not ashamed but as though we may just have seen an honest-to-God work of art.

"Stay and play with us."

Following in the grand old tradition of horror films such as The Innocents, The Shining and, more recently, The Others, The Orphanage is a gripping excursion into grief, loneliness and regret. Featuring stunning performances, not only from its central cast but also from the troubled building - the orphanage of the title - itself. Just like Kubrick's Overlook Hotel, the dwelling makes a perfect location for the disturbing jolts and jumps that occur with alarming regularity throughout the superbly realised script and direction of newcomers Sergio G. Sánchez and Juan Antonio Bayona. The darkly hidden cracks and cramped secreted rooms make for a powerful metaphor illustrating the mysteries of time and memory.



Returning to the orphanage of her childhood, Laura (Belén Rueda) along with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and adopted son Simón (Roger Príncep), hopes to re-open it as a place to care for children with special needs. Simón quickly makes friends in his new home, albeit ones his parents can not see. Racing through the house on adventures with his mother, it seems as if the days could not get any sweeter. This is, of course, when things go horrifically wrong.

A mysterious, creepy old woman is found on the property and an impending dread follows. Simón's playmates jump in number and his behaviour becomes erratic. During the grand opening party, Simón vanishes. Now Laura must find out why her son is gone, and whom or what has taken him. Finding the answers will unravel a mystery thought dead and buried for many years... but as we know from experience, in these creepy little tales, things tend to not stay buried.

Rueda - whom you may know from Alejandro Amenábar's Mar adentro - plays Laura as a loving mother and free spirit, not against chasing after her son whose imagination drives them on. There is vulnerability amid her fearlessness though, which comes across in moments of terror. She feels the darkness coming, and you feel it along with her. Princep is every bit the angelic little boy needed for this role with no forcing of cuteness you might find in an American film, all too often. His sleepy little voice is just the thing to lull you into a false sense of security... the ultimate set up. Cayo is also pretty good as Laura's husband, representing the adult skepticism that eventually washes away.

It's nice to see Oscar gold and new-found Hollywood cred haven't changed Guillermo del Toro. Now that he's finally able to make films however he chooses, it's refreshing to see he is using that power to help push projects that he believes in. Del Toro's films tend to be rich in colour and atmosphere and, although he's job here was solely to produce and promote, his fingerprints are all over The Orphanage. It's easy to see how he was drawn to this film in the first place, with its unique style of retelling a classic fairy tale, and with its repetitive theme of childhood monsters that adults struggle to see or comprehend. This is a bedtime tale that will thrill children while it terrifies adults.

The Orphanage has been compared a lot to del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, but it better resembles the Spanish school of horror - most notably Amenábar's The Others. Unlike Labyrinth, The Orphanage doesn't focus on a child wandering through a nightmarish fantasy world, but rather on an adult who is desperately trying to gain entrance to the world that holds her son captive. While as gruesome and terrifying as any moment in Pan's Labyrinth, Bayona's film relies far more on atmosphere and subtlety to convey terror and it is devastatingly effective. While it is capable of shocking you, it is in the drawn out eerie moments that The Orphanage will make your skin crawl. It knows what genuine suspense is.

Bayona's work here as a director is worthy of some serious praise. The young Barcelonian strikes a fantastic balance between well-earned chills and strangely heart-touching emotion. (And what an ending!) The film seems awash in both bitter-sweet nostalgia and stylishly grim atmosphere, and, though it mainly functions on the premise that what we can't see is more terrifying than what we can, there's some genuinely disturbing and graphic imagery on display as welll, so gore-heads won't be disappointed. This young man needs more scripts going his way; as long as he knows how to pick them, he's going places.

Even while you're getting creeped out of your wits, art director Iñigo Navarro (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, The Machinist) and cinematographer Óscar Faura (another newcomer) will make your eyes salivate at the scenery that appears on screen. Using a gorgeous palette of dark blues, browns, reds, and greys, The Orphanage would be stunningly beautiful if it wasn't so phenomenally dreary and foreboding. It's also an extremely moody and sad film. I can't remember the last time a horror film made tears stream down my face. In fact, I don't think that had ever happened.

And for all the horror elements and stylistic set pieces, The Orphanage is highly dependent on its story to draw you in. While it's a simple story, and it draws from common horror themes and clichés, the film still manages to captivate you and make you genuinely care. This is the most rare and precious kind of horror film - the one that doesn't attempt to cheat you with cheap scares, but rather focuses on creating a frightening atmosphere that builds with each passing frame. It's a credit to Sánchez for not just writing an outstanding film, but such a welcome addition to the horror genre. Thanks to Guillermo del Toro, perhaps more then just the most ardent of horror fans will get a chance to witness it.

It is Ellen Page, in the end, who makes Juno such an enjoyable and fun film to watch. It was about time to see a female teenage character who wasn't either stupid or typical. Page's looks, irony and quirkyness is a joy to watch for anyone who always felt different and doesn't fit in the 'normal' standards. Turns out it's true: Juno is the Little Miss Sunshine of 2007. A film that, in its simplicity and honesty, celebrates life and chooses to show how wonderful it can get, rather than how shitty and meaningless it is most of the time. Awsome soundtrack too!

School Bully: "Kid, kiddie.
[whistles]
Shaun: You talkin' to me?
School Bully: [nods]
Shaun: What do you want?
School Bully: [looks at Shaun's overly long pants] What the fuck are they?
Shaun: I'm wearin 'em for a bet. What's your excuse?"



British filmmaker Shane Meadows has never been one to shy away from drawing on his own history for his films rooting all of his work thus far in the working class English Midlands that are his own roots. But, with his fifth full-length feature This Is England, Meadows takes the autobiographical element of his work to an entirely different level, basing the entire film on his own experiences with the UK skinhead movement of the early '80s. This is England is a masterful film: vibrant, complex, full of life, remarkably unsentimental and unshrinkingly honest.

Set quite specifically in July 1983, young Thomas Turgoose stars as 12-year-old Shaun, a regular British lad who lives with his widowed mum (Jo Hartley) as his father was one of the soldiers killed in the Falklands war. An awkward and lonely kid, Shaun is teased and bullied at school over the usual things - the out of style clothing that is all his mother can provide and his absent father, the latter of which provokes him to violence. Shaun lives a solitary life until, in the last day of school, he meets Woody, an older skinhead, and his small group of friends, who essentially adopt him. Though all signs are that Woody has some sort of darker past, this particular group are a happy lot, interracial and intergender - including Woody's girlfriend Lol (Vicky McLure) and her friends, and Milky (Andrew Shim), a first-generation Anglo-Jamaican - and mostly just looking to have a good time while providing the loyalty and support that is otherwise entirely lacking from their lives.

Everything is working well for Shaun until the arrival of Combo, an old friend of Woody's, fresh off three years in jail. And if Woody represents the happier face of the skinhead movement, more interested in Jamaican reggae and ska, drinking a few bears and having a laugh than anything else, then Combo is the sinister opposite, representing all of the negatives that come to mind with the skinhead label. Combo is militantly political, particularly involved in the rise of the National Front's youth movement, and his presence immediately divides the group into those who, like Woody, are simply looking for friendship and brotherhood and those who are drawn to the racist element of the movement.

If this were a Hollywood film - which would never be possible in the first place - Shaun would follow Woody and that would be the end of it, but this is a very British film based on real life and real people. If Woody was a surrogate brother for Shaun then Combo quickly becomes established as a father figure. Shaun simply idolizes the man, drawn by his strength and passion and the strength that he offers. Blind to the dark consequences of Combo's beliefs, it isn't long before Shaun is mimicking his every move, spray painting racist slogans, attending political rallies and threatening shop keepers. It all leads to a cruel awakening... This Is England is a coming of age film like no other. Beyond simply dealing with his own adolescence, Shaun - who, we feel the need to keep telling ourselves, is just a 12-year-old kid - must come to terms with mortality, hatred and violence with absolutely no one to guide him through the process.

Meadows is to be commended for his treatment of very difficult source material. He clearly loves the era of the film and has many happy memories of the time, memories which still ring true and clear, while also being rightly consternated at the violent undercurrents. He is one who remembers that the racist element of the skin movement is actually only a relatively small subset of the group and, while he certainly does not gloss over the negatives of that element, he gives equal time to other aspects of the movement as well: the camaraderie and sense of family that drove it in its high points, not to mention the simple fact that, outside of the racist subset, it was actually an inter-racial, pro-harmony movement.

Shot by regular Meadows' collaborator Danny Cohen on delicious 16mm to evoke a gritty, realistic and retro feel, This Is England is an impressively stylish film and it recalls the work of certain British directors, who were obvious influences for Meadows, particularly Alan Clarke. The first half works as a celebration, the musical tastes and the styles of the second generation Skins in this revivalist era paying homage to their quirks and characteristics from clothes (boots, braces and Ben Sherman shirts) to the soundtrack of their lives (classics from Toots and the Maytals and The Specials amongst others). It is flooded and alive with the idiosyncrasies of the movement and what it meant to those involved. The inherently nostalgic, down-to-earth approach and identifiable 'Englishness' of the film make it an essential example of exciting, modern British filmmaking that's reflective of real people and (sadly) real life.

The entire cast of the film is very strong - Meadows has long been known for drawing quality performances out of his actors - but special mention must be given to a pair in particular. The first is naturally Thomas Turgoose - who had never acted before, had been banned from his school play for behaving badly and even demanded £5 to turn up for the film's auditions - who portrays Shaun and gives the film its heart. Being given difficult, complex and demanding material, Turgoose proves himsef remarkably up to the challenge of capturing the spirit of the times despite not having been alive during them. Meadows apparently re-worked the character to allow Turgoose to bring some of his own experiences to the mix, essentially making Shaun a combination of Turgoose and himself, and that investment pays off with an entirely believable performance.

The second face that deserves high praise is Stephen Graham as Combo. Best known for his part as Tommy in Snatch, this is without a doubt the finest performance of Graham's career and the sort that should place him in very high demand. Combo is the sort of character that would be deathly easy to reduce to a cartoon, the simply minded violently racist thug. And he is those things but he is much more as well, and Graham easily takes on the complicated psychology of this man, with a powerful-beyond-words performance that recalls actors like Ray Winstone and Gary Oldman. He is a menacing physical presence, a man desperate to be proven strong, fiercely loyal to his friends, as truly protective and caring for Shaun as he can be, and at points dismayed at his own capacity for violence. If there is any justice out there, Graham's performance should be career making and a start point for a fine, long career.

Meadows is a filmmaker who, thus far, has been unfairly limited by his own strengths, by the uncanny specificity of his work. "He's too English", goes the common argument, "so people in the US won't be able to relate." Well, that argument is, simply put, garbage. With very few exceptions, specificity is a key to great filmmaking, the road to the honesty and truthfulness in one specific situation that will allow audiences around the world - be it in Europe, the US or China - to relate and make that truth their own. Working in generalities, on the other hand, simply turns everything pointless.

This Is England is cinema at its highest level. It's smart, funny, poignant, charming, socially, historically and humanly relevant and affecting. It again proves that Meadows, already loved by many for A Room For Romeo Brass and Dead Man's Shoes, is one of the truly powerful and unique voices in UK film today, a master of character with an uncanny gift for fusing nostalgia with harsh reality. One of the finest films of 2007. Very strongly recommended.

I've been a fan of Sarah Polley since the first time I saw her in Go, no sure how many years ago. She had two collaborations with spanish director Isabel Coixet, which resulted in two of my favourite films (My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words). Hell, I even watched Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead pretty much just because of her. That might help to explain the reason why I waited more than three months, with the DVD of Away from Her on my shelf, just so I could watch it in the theatre.



It has been said that Alzheimer's is the only "major" terminal condition to exact a greater toll on the family than the victim. Compared to cancer (for example), Alzheimer's offers a relatively gentle journey into oblivion for the patient, a gradual dissolution of memory and personality. For the family and such, however, the experience is different. They must watch as a loved one disappears, stolen away piece by piece, before their eyes. The process of mourning begins before the patient has died. Having dealt with it personally (my grandfather, who was a second, if not a first father for me) I knew better than I wished that Alzheimer's is not exacly a popular, nor easy subject for a film.

If Away from Her had turned out to be unrealistic and manipulative, I would have been tremendously disappointed. Luckily, it didn't. It represents one of the few clear-headed, uncompromising looks at Alzheimer's and its impacts. In large part due to Polley's approach, this is not a relentless downer. Calling it 'life affirming' might be a stretch but it at least offer moments of hope and an understanding of what it means to move on while at the same time remaining true to the past. Unlike films like The Notebook and Iris, Away from Her does not embrace the tear-jerker label. It is sad and touching, yes, but not a tragedy, and it does not seek to reduce its audience to hopeless weeping.

Like any actor-turned-director, Polley tells her story through her actors. She doesn't try too hard. There's nothing flashy in her approach. She respects her characters and the story they have to tell. Casting Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent (but especially Christie) as her leads, was, with all due respect for her undeniable filmmaker qualities, more than half of the work. Christie is still an incredibly radiant presence at 66 and she rivets us to the screen. Her Fiona is a woman of grace, charm and beauty, qualities that she obviously shares. Her performance is truly fantastic and now seats at #2 on my favourite female performances of 2007. Then, Pinsent's performance holds the film together. His steadfast love and growing realization of what his future holds is heartbreakingly sad. His performance is never cloyingly sentimental. It is always direct and deeply felt. Away from Her is an actors' film.

it wouldn't be too far from reality to compare Sarah Polley's debut to the work of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, who specialized in family dramas with a deep, cleansing, almost spiritual touch. There, Polley is less interested in how many hankies her film rates than she is in touching the human soul and finding it damaged, yet still beautiful. The world has in Polley another filmmaker full of potential. Give her a camera and some chances and she will make beautiful, haunting films in the future. Away from Her is, I hope, just the beggining.

"If I had a penny for everything I love about you, I would have many pennies."

These days true originality is something of a rarity. That's why, to me, it's a pure joy to come across with such a fresh, smart and witty film like Waitress. Actress-turned-writer/director Adrienne Shelly (lead in Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth and Trust) has made a 'little' film that just emanates beauty and unpretentiousness. Another gem this wonderful year has brought us.



Keri Russell - the talented and underrated Keri Russell from "Felicity" - stars as Jenna, a young woman who works as a waitress/pie maker in a small town's pie restaurant. Jenna is unhappily married with the controlling, Neanderthal Earl - one of the most ridiculous and pathetic characters I've ever seen in my lifetime - (well played by Jeremy Sisto) and her only two friends are her co-workers Becky (Cheryl "Larry David's wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm" Hines) and Dawn (Adrienne Shelly herself, in an adorable role). The only thing in her life that brings her 'some' happiness is making pies. Designing and creating new, unique pies for the restaurant's daily specials. That's probably enough to show how wonderful her life is... *Sarcasm*

She has just discovered that she's pregnant - a fantastic opening scene, where she says something like: "I don't need no baby. I don't want no trouble. I just wanna make pies. That's all I wanna do, make pies!" - and, although the baby isn't exacly welcome (she calls it "an alien and a parasite"), it will change her life. That's how she meets the newly arrived in town Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion, in another fun and charismatic role), a nervous, kind of foolish doctor with whom she'll have an affair and who'll remind her what it feels like to be happy.

Even if its premise might not seem exacly original - woman trapped in unhappy life who tries to escape abusive husband - Waitress is as original and unique as a film can get. Garanteed. Shelly beautifully balances clever humor, light drama and heartbreakingly lovely moments of happy truth. The film's sweet and utterly honest tone makes it one of those films that was made to be loved and enjoyed. Not judged or criticized, even if it might have its flaws.

Some scenes and moments go way over merely 'enjoyable', dangerously approaching sheer genius. This includes Jenna's letters to her unborn baby, all starting with "Dear baby...", as a form of narration or her pie invention - and naming - process ('I-Hate-My-Husband Pie'; 'Pregnant-Miserable-Self-Pitying Loser Pie') shot in fantastic, colorful and vibrant overhead close-ups that will make you salivate throughout the entire film. Little warning: do NOT watch with an empty stomach. Fair warning.

The film's female strenght and sensitivity is obvious. Every single male character in the film is either a jerk or an idiot. And don't get me wrong... I didn't find that insulting. Not at all, I actually think it's pretty faithful to the real world. Men really are either jerks or idiots. Myself included. Shelly's unquestionable filmmaker's gift, when combined with the cleverness and brilliance of her dialogues and characters and Keri Russell's career-defining performance make Waitress what it is: a captivating, graceful and meaningful film that should be seen by as many eyes and hearts as humanly possible.

RIP Adrienne Shelly... :(

"The most astonishing immersion of one performer into the body and soul of another ever encountered on film."

Stephen Holden



It is EXTREMELY hard (impossible, actually) to review La Môme focussing on, and only on the film itself. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't... Once you decide to to see the film, you're irremediably about to witness one of the greatest performances in the history of Cinema.

Marion Cotillard's portrayal and encarnation of Edith Piaf isn't just another 'great' performance, with the expression 'Oscar-worthy' written all over it (something that happens every week these days, whenever an actor/actress does a decent job). It's a performance that belongs to a different category, that assumes an almost historical importance and that shouldn't even be disscussable as to any acting award that might exist.

She doesn't merely embody Piaf, she is literally possessed with all of the monstrous talent - and behavior - that burst out of the parisian chanteuse. From her struggling youth to her middle and dying adulthood; all the moves and gestures, in and out of the stage, all the facial and verbal expressions, the personality - with her occasaionally big ego and her deliciously dark humor. Even the voice... It's all there. An immaculate and ultimately perfect performance.



It has been said that the greatest obstacle in mounting a successful biopic - a genre that hasn't succeeded many times, with the most renowned exceptions of Lawrence of Arabia, Amadeus or Schindler's List - is for the lead performer to overcome ventriloquism. Which, obviously, Cotillard does. After a series of recent disastrous docudramas, such as last year's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus and Factory Girl, Olivier Dahan's film is all the more impressive for its energy and completely earned grandiosity.

Although Dahan claims his intention "wasn't to make a strict factual biopic, but a fanciful portrait", La Môme, in the end, manages to put together the most important moments of Piaf's troubled and fascinating life. From her childhood, through her abandonment first by her mother and then twice by her father, her brief childhood blindness, her upbringing in a brothel, the start of her career singing on Parisian streets for centimes or her fall, consumed by ilness and drug addiction. Dahan's narrative makes us travel from a period of La Môme's life to another. A scene from childhood seamlessly melts into an adult tragedy. One minute we see a young girl singing on the streets and the next a broken, disabled Piaf in her late 40's...

As we float through those times for two hours, Dahan makes us wait for the cathartic release until the very end, with Piaf's last performance at the Olympia. Never a final scene has meant so much. Never a song has meant so much as "Non, je ne regrette rien" ('No, I regret nothing'). An absolutely shivery and tear-dropping scene of dramatic proportions. A perfect finale for a pushing-perfect film.

It is difficult for me to explain the emotional impact this film had on me. I grew up watching my mother listening to Edith Piaf's records while I did my homework... As far as I'm concerned she was one of the few godesses that ever stepped foot on a stage, one of the most brilliant artists that ever lived. If you add to that the amount of pain and suffering she had to bare her entire existence (lost pretty much everyone she ever loved) you can easily understand why she is an icon and one of the most beloved artists in her country and around the world, and therefore worthy of every single tribute we can think of.

Yet the appeal and beauty of La Môme - or La Vie en Rose, if you like - transcends nationality or people's taste in music. Simply put: this is a film that EVERY human being should see. Period.

Dagmar: It's such a comfort sometimes, just to have somebody's arms around you. Don't you think?
Lars Lindstrom: No.
Dagmar: It feels good.
Lars Lindstrom: It does not feel good. It, it hurts.
Dagmar: Oh, like a cut, or bruise?
Lars Lindstrom: Like a burn. Like when you go outside and your feet freeze and you come back in and then they thaw out? It's like that. It's almost exactly like that.
Dagmar: Same with everyone?
Lars Lindstrom: Uh, not really with Bianca. But everyone else."



Set in a Wisconsin small town during a typically snowy winter, Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is an awkward young man who lives in the garage beside his deceased father's house. With his brother Gus (Paul Schneiderand) and especially his sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer) worried about him and wishing he'd settle down and raise a family (especially after years of living under the shadow of his incommunicative widower father), Lars' social life consists primarily of attending church. He avoids eye contact like poison ivy and only talks to other people when absolutely necessary. Lars' family is obviously overjoyed when he makes the announcement that he has a special lady friend visiting. Delight turns to panic, however, when the new girlfriend is introduced to them.

Although lovely in her own way, the fact that Bianca is a realistic full-sized doll with an elaborate back story (charmingly recounted by a boisterously in-love Lars) leads Gus and Karin to believe he has finally gone off the deep end. At the urging of Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), a kind but slightly loopy doctor, his worried family is told to go with the flow and pretend that Lars's lady friend is real, in the hope of helping him work through his issues. The local community ultimately responds with surprising compassion in welcoming the new couple as Bianca goes bowling, starts a career as a model, and is embraced as a member of the community.

The underlying theme of "Six Feet Under" scribe Nancy Oliver's Oscar-nominee script - how a damaged person comes to terms with past traumas and grows into adult responsibilities - may feel familiar, but what's fresh and charming is the way the characters surrounding the protagonist also grow as they help him through his crisis. Tenderly depicting his characters' human foibles with low-key visual humor, first time director Craig Gillespie - although it may be argued that any director could have successfully pulled off a script this good - never condescends or goes for an easy joke. Oliver's simple, yet so concise dialogue also avoids obvious laughs.

Ryan Gosling is marvelous and utterly sincere as the edgy Lars. His unaffected interplay with his immobile love object makes her a flesh-and-blood presence. The film follows him through all the stages of first love - infatuation, jealousy, tears - and Gosling never winks at the character. He sings Bianca a warbling falsetto version of Nat King Cole's "L-O-V-E" that is a pure expression of unselfconscious happiness. Later, Lars shouts at her angrily and when the eavesdropping Karin gasps, "They never argue!" her round-eyed shock is entirely understandable.

However, no matter how good Goslin's performance may be - as good, to say the least, as the one in Half Nelson - the real standout here is Emily Mortimer. She makes Karin the story's stealth heroine, operating behind the scenes to help Lars work through his issues to an appropriately hopeful conclusion. Patricia Clarkson brings calm wisdom to the role of the town doctor, Kelli Garner is note-perfect as the cute girl with a crush on Lars, and Paul Schneider makes Gus' journey from frustration and embarrassment to acceptance of his oddball brother funny and touching.

Every scene that could be played for pathos unleash great, non-hysterical laughs, while those that could turn crude or silly are compassionate. For me, that will always be one of the most magical things a film can do: making you feel happiness and sadness at the same time.

Films like Lars and the Real Girl belong to the restrictive group of films that exemplify the very best that American cinema can - and should - provide the world with more often. It is, as far as I'm concerned the most original and unique film of 2007 that I've seen - and yes, I've seen Juno too. A precious pearl.

"Sometimes, if things are closed, you just, open them up."

In one scene in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, Nikolai (played masterfully by Viggo Mortensen) is standing half-naked, wearing only a pair of black boxers, in front of a group of old men, pointing and discussing the different tattoos that adorn Nikolai's body. It is the film's ultimate Cronenbergian moment, where the organic body is blurred to have a synthetic purpose and in that moment's case, the recording and retelling of Nikolai's life through the tattoos to the senior members of vor v zakone ("thief in law") before he is accepted to the exclusive brotherhood.



The centuries-old practice of etching figures in the epidermis (like proto-men etching drawings of their daily lives in caves) serves less an aesthetic purpose here and more a functional or mechanical motive, quite similar to the vagina-shaped cavity in James Woods' abdomen that hides his firearm in Videodrome, the wounds that elicit sexual satisfaction in Crash, or the hideous scarring in Ed Harris' eye that foretells his moral positioning in A History of Violence, among others.

When Nikolai is deemed worthy of the brotherhood, his skin is etched once more with the stars that represent his affiliation and rank. This represents his point of no return, the moment wherein he can no longer claim his moral ambivalence by declaring himself as mere chauffeur because now, as the permanent stars on his chest and knees show, he is a ranking member of vor v zakone. In the film's most famous sequence, Nikolai is caught naked inside a sauna, the inked markings in his body revealing to his assassins what he is (Russian mob) and who he is purported to be (Kirill (Vincent Cassel), only son of the mob boss Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), which the latter saves from vengeful Chechens by turning Nikolai into bait).

The bloody showdown between the two leather-jacketed killers and Nikolai may very well be remembered as example of Cronenberg's exercise in efficient directorial economics, where the editing is wise, the cinematography unflashy yet purposeful, and the action choreography astute and prudent, wisely foregoing of the cheap immediacy of gunfights for the subliminal eroticism of knife-fighting. However, beneath this showing of Cronenberg's unquestionable directorial flair are the consequences of the lopsided sauna fight-off to the blurred parameters that frame Nikolai's ambivalent identity: he can no longer be blanketed the anonymity of undercover agent, yet he burrows himself deeper into the core of the Russian mob. The film's final frame (presumably after overthrowing Semyon as head of the mob, Nikolai is sitting in contemplative and punished mood with Kirill beside him) merely strengthens the notion of moral ambiguity that befell him after he is rewarded the certainty of identity when he finally becomes one with the vor v zakone.

While Nikolai is the obvious centrepiece of Eastern Promises, the characters around him are also enveloped with the same warped senses of identity and morality. Even Anna (played with unglamorous strength by Naomi Watts), the midwife whose supposed motivation in the film is to decipher the identity of Tatiana, the 14-year-old girl who dies while giving birth to her baby, from the diary she has left behind so that she can deliver her baby to the nearest of kin, is introduced a backstory that shrouds her personality with a hint of personal and possibly selfish motive - to replace the baby lost with Tatiana's. In a way, Anna can be seen as a much tamer version of Nola Carveth from Cronenberg's The Brood; both go through extreme lengths (dedicated research for Anna, and a horde of cancerous humanoids that partake the appearance of her child for Nola) to fill their respective maternal voids.

Kirill's relationship with Nikolai alludes to many things. First, it contemplates a simple relational scenario of boss and employee, where Nikolai, as self-declared chauffeur succumbs to Kirill's several arbitrary requests, including a rather suspiciously motivated order to have Nikolai fuck one of the girls in the family's den of imported prostitutes. This immediately establishes that there is something beyond the professional relation that links the two, possibly one that hints of simple camaraderie, fraternal affection, and maybe and most probably, a homosexual attraction to the reserved yet unassumingly very sexual Nikolai.

Cronenberg is careful not to make Kirill's homosexual tendencies obvious, instead he conceives Kirill as utterly troubled and divided: supposedly convinced that he's straight, in accordance with the necessity of continuing the familial machismo that is inherited from Russia, but internal and external factors pull him towards the fractured sexuality which Nikolai apparently exploits. Cronenberg never discloses whether the tension between them become consummated, but the atmosphere of ever-changing stances in identity overpowers, especially nearing the end of the film when Kirill finally breaks from his moral and sexual grey area and surrenders to Nikolai's ascendancy over him (as exemplified by the uncomfortably close embrace with Nikolai after deciding to turn over the baby to Anna) in the concrete banks of the Thames.

Place and geography seem to play a very vital role in Cronenberg's examination of conflicted identities in several of his films. In M. Butterfly, he touched on the role of the exotic locale of 1960s colonial China to skew the supposed certain sexual identity of Jeremy Irons' character who falls in love with a Chinese opera singer who turns out to be a man. In Spider, Ralph Fiennes' character's schizophrenic tendencies again ripen when he's transferred from the asylum to the halfway house. In A History of Violence, Mortensen's character's identity seems to be very well-entrenched within the locale that he associates himself with in such a way that when the memory of his former life in a different place attempts to wake him up, he retaliates and once again assimilates an identity not different from his previous life.

In Eastern Promises, Cronenberg is again examining the role of geography in his theme of identity. When Semyon gains knowledge of his son's supposed homosexuality, he blames London as the primary cause for the sudden and alarming shift in gender preference within his family line. In one pertinent scene where Anna, her aunt and uncle, are discussing the diary of Tatiana over dinner, Anna berates her uncle regarding a grammatical error he made. In the same scene, Anna opts to have the diary translated since her knowledge of the Russian language is non-existent, despite the fact that her family is from Russia. Language becomes the apparent discrepancy and source of disconnect that the change in geography has resulted in.

Cultural identity has fizzled into a near non-existence because of the deliberate emigration of Russians to England. Even the sentimental central point of the screenplay (written by Steven Knight, scribe of Steven Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, a film which also discusses the struggles of immigrants in England) of underage girls from former-USSR countries being transported to England for prostitution is overpowered by this suggestion of Cronenberg of a deterioration and corruption of identity (physical, moral, sexual and cultural) through geographical dislocation.

Many have regarded Eastern Promises as inferior to its supposed companion piece, A History of Violence. I disagree. Although Knight's screenplay is oftentimes problematic in its blatancy in forwarding melodramatic motivations, Cronenberg successfully floats an atmosphere of fleeting then freezing fractured identities which the characters dolorously inhabit. A History of Violence details the conflicts that arise when a morally assured man suddenly discovers a forgotten past that is inconsistent with his present life. Eastern Promises follows the same thematic course that Cronenberg seems bent on pursuing and takes it a step further, forwarding characters with issues that overflow past relational, generational and geographic borders.

Arthur Rimbaud: "Seven simple rules of going into hiding: one, never trust a cop in a raincoat. Two, beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway. Three, if asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again. Four, never give your real name. Five, if ever asked to look at yourself, don't. Six, never do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand. And finally seven, never create anything. It will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life. And it will never change."



Like David Lean's famously fictionalized 1962 biopic, Lawrence of Arabia, I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' new film based on "the music and many lives of Bob Dylan", begins with a fatal motorcycle accident. In real life, T.E. Lawrence was indeed killed in his bike wreck. Mr. Dylan, however, survived his. I'm Not There uses the actual 1966 crash, a career milestone of some significance to Dylan's more analytical fans, and his fictional death ("God rest his soul and rudeness", intones one voice-over inscription) as a launching pad for a narratively impenetrable, historically unreliable, and yet emotionally lucid appraisal of Bob Dylan's songs, life, and myths, as well as the American decades that spawned them. I'm Not There is easily the most daring experimentation in filmmaking (read: a bite in the ass of cinema) since Lars von Trier's Dogville in 2003.

Half casting stunt, half cinematic experimentation, cinematic manipulator extraordinaire Todd Haynes, the man who gave us Far From Heaven, a socially ecstatic and scathing indictment of American sexual mores, and Velvet Goldmine, a kinky Citizen Kane structured ode to Rock Gods, now hands us his by-far fullest work yet - a deconstruction not only of the enigmatic Bob Dylan, a man who playing his own game of propagandism, already sliced and diced himself into a multitude of ideas and ideals, but of the very concept of cinema itself. Taking the typically one-man (or one-woman) ultra-polished horse and pony show that is the biopic genre, Haynes flips it on its already much harassed head and shows us not one man, but six (or really seven) different aspects of one man, here personified by six different actors, all of different ages, races and even genders. Six actors, but in search of what?

With influences ranging from Fellini and Godard to Laurence Sterne and James Joyce, with a bit of Marcel Proust thrown in, Todd Haynes has created not only a film "about" Bob Dylan, but also a film that plays at times as being from Dylan, to Dylan, by Dylan and even on occasion, becoming Dylan. Breathed of the same air in which Dylan created his own self-imitating (and highly underrated) surrealist 4-hour-long Renaldo and Clara in 1978, and possibly with many of the same box office blockades (as far as the common filmgoer is concerned - length, unwarranted philosophizing, a dibilitatingly obscure linear structure), Haynes' film is a stroke of mad genius mixed with an air of semi-satiric superiority and blended with the mystique of frustrated stardom - all rolled into some sort of post-modern mixture of deconstructive catharsis.

First up - although the film is only superficially linear and Haynes cuts back and forth at the slightest provocation and/or impulse) is new Brit sensation Ben Whishaw as the poet Arthur Rimbaud, the personification of Dylan's poetic aspirations. In the midst of an interrogation being held by an off-stage voice, Whishaw is both mouthpiece for Dylan and his very own Joan of Arc, his face as blaise here as Dreyer's Maria Falconetti's was tormented. He is the voice of contesting, and unsure, reason.

Next comes Marcus Carl Franklin as a 10-year-old train-hopping runaway in 1959 who goes by the name Woody Guthrie. Rather appropriately played by a black child actor, considering Dylan's youthful exuberance for Guthrie and his being led to the origin of blues music through this exuberance, this is the boy the man would become. Obsessed to the point of believing his own lies, Woody is Dylan as Dylan perhaps dreamt himself as a child. Tremulous at times, yet full of vitality and desire. Replete with likely fictitious tales of being a serial runaway, Dylan's childhood fantasies of becoming his one-time idol play as both prelude and omen to what is to come. Where Rimbaud is his mind, Woody is the heart of Bob Dylan.

After the child prodigy incarnation of Woody vanishes from the screen (for now), we are given Christian Bale as the finger-pointing, political singing-songwriting-harmonica-playing troubadour Jack Rollins, here accompanied by Julianne Moore in a sort of VH1's "Where Are They Now?" mode, giving us the early acoustic-strung world shattering aspirations of a still quite green Dylan. We watch wide-eyed naivety turn to jaded indignity in Bale's superbly bitter (and typically tortured Bale-ian) performance. This is Dylan turning his back on what people "expected" him to be. This is Dylan refusing to be the left-wing lap-dog they wanted. This is Dylan turning toward a different left. The left of the counter-culture. This is the soul of Dylan, aching to be alive.

This turning away from the "established" folk-centred left and turning toward the beat aesthetic is perfectly played in what is surely the centrepiece of Haynes' cubist masterwork - Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn, wild-eyed speed-freak electric Rock & Roll rebel at the apex of his (or her - does it even matter at this point?) circus cannonball blast to stardom. Shot in black and white and layered after both D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 Dylan doc Don't Look Back and Fellini's 1963 masterpiece of misinterpretation and misdirection 8½, this section is loaded with allegorical slaps at modern-day mass-hysteroid media and the often negative effect it has on celebrity, complete with a little "cameo" by four mop-topped lads from Liverpool, playing "A Hard Day's Night"/"Help!"-like with a similarly playful Jude/Dylan/Blanchett.

And if Dylan truly is the hero of our story then Bruce Greenwood as a quite nasty little Brit TV talk show host known as Mr. Jones, is the villain. Mocking Dylan's pretentiousness while irritably being counter-attacked by Dylan/Quinn/Blanchett's sharp-tongued back remarks, these sparring matches are the epitome of Dylan's jadedness toward the media. Meanwhile, we get David Cross as a pitch-perfect Allen Ginsberg making his entrance à la golf cart and Michelle Williams as part Edie Sedgewick, part personification of Dylan's fading muse. It was shortly after this time period - the Blonde on Blonde era and what many call the apogee of Dylan's songwriting career - that Dylan crashed his motorcycle and became a backwoods recluse for several years.

This segues nicely into Dylan's recluse days and into the "family" life of Dylan personified here by Heath Ledger, doing his best James Dean (yet another Dylan idol). Ledger plays Robbie Clark, half rising half fading star of the silver screen and the incarnation of Dylan as Dylan himself showed in parts of Renaldo and Clara. Failing actor, failing husband and failing father. The "macho" antithesis of Blanchett's Jude, Ledger's Robbie is a man at constant odds with himself and all those around him. Playing Robbie's wife (and stand-in for Sara Dylan, Suze Rotolo and other Dylan loves and muses - as well as Haynes' own personal Anna Karina) is French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, appropriately (and surely uncoincidentally) cast in the role of spotlight mother, herself coming from the womb of a fashion model and the loins of a pop star. This is Dylan as false God. This is Dylan as faker. This is Dylan's lost soul.

And what would a lost soul be without someone to find - and save - it. This is exactly what happened to Dylan in the late '70s when he "found" Jesus and this is just what we get from Christian (ironically named) Bale in redux. Former musical instigator Jack Rollins is now evangelical minister Paster John in what plays as a brief interlude from the rest of the story - which may be just what Dylan's own "rebirth" was. If Ledger's Robbie was his false God, then this could very well be Dylan as false Man.

Then comes the final act. The reclusive hermetic Dylan. The fantasy Dylan. The dream Dylan. He comes in the package of a greying Richard Gere known as Mr. B, or as we later find out, Billy the Kid. Running from the law, running from his music, running from his fans and running from himself, Gere's Billy the Kid appears in what could very well be a dream world, full of surreal imagery and replete with masked men, women and children. Everyone, even in his dreams, are hiding - and Dylan is no different. Gere's "Kid" goes on the run and finds himself hopping back on the trains of his youth - and in doing so, we are taken right back to the beginning again. It is Billy's temporally implausible discovery of Woody's guitar aboard an empty boxcar that brings Haynes' film river running itself right back to where we started from.

And still, while the film is, of course, based on the life of (if not the ruminations of) Bob Dylan, not to mention the mix of influences cited earlier, there is yet another must-see influence weighing heavy upon the auteuristic stylings of Haynes, and that influence is Jean-Luc Godard. Beginning and ending (as useless as those relative terms are in this case) in much the same gunshot fashion as Godard's Masculine-Feminine - not coincidentally the only one of Godard's seemingly endless oeuvre to openly reference Dylan - Haynes, at his most Godardian, lock stocks and barrels his way through the life of Bob Dylan with the stream-of-consciousness rhythms of a deconstructionive mad scientist. Haynes as the all-knowing, all-seeing doctor, and the many ideas of who or what or where or when Bob Dylan is, as his somewhat flawed yet genius monster - all the while rejecting everything one expects from the biopic genre. After all, as Haynes recently more than alludes to in an interview, there are lies in all biographies, but at least here we are let in on the joke.

While I consider myself a Dylan fan, I have a good friend (an older friend) who is, and I don't think he would be the slightest bit offended by the choice of adjective, obsessed with all things Dylan. Owning just about every recorded piece of music, and much of it on vinyl, and being a true Dylanologist of the highest order, I am sure he would get many more of the referential moments than even I did. Which may very well beg for a precursive crash course in Dylanology for those out there not so inclined toward him, and though the recurring tarantula should be quite obvious to even the novice Dylan acolyte, I'm sure a primer in watching Scorsese's expounding doc No Direction Home (a great film even outside of the predications of I'm Not There) wouldn't hurt anyone.

In sum - and I congratulate all those who are still reading this - there are not many people who have been able to successfully metamorphose into so many different creatures (possibly John Lennon or Miles Davis or the aforementioned Godard), but still this film is not just about Dylan. Never uttering the name throughout, this film is as much about Bob Dylan as it is not about Bob Dylan. Taking Proust's idea of a "succession of selves" and running with it - as Dylan has done to himself throughout his career (we are still not sure of many of the facts) - Haynes shows us not just another life (or another film), but life (or cinema) itself.

One of the best ORIGINAL screenplays of 2007, top class acting and directing. Marisa Tomei looks amazingly sexy for a 43-year-old woman. Sidney Lumet deserves a final Academy Award nomination. A grand, grand filmmaker.

"This is your brain on anime."



An animated masterpiece! Anything less just seems insultingly insufficient when it comes to describe Paprika. Wether you consider it a 2006 or 2007 film and regardless if the Academy recognizes it or not, I have no choice but to surrender and accept the fact that this is one of the best films I've seen this year. A surreal, stunningly brightly colored and mind-bending (and blowing) Sci-Fi wonder that takes you on one of the most cool, bizarre and mentally challenging rides you'll ever have the privilege to embark in. Dreams, reality, the in-between... Satoshi Kon (the next Miyazaki?) explores and toys with the concepts, making us wondering almost constantly which of the two we're actually watching. Even though it's lighter and 'easier' to enjoy, Miyazaki's Spirited Away could be used as a reference point. Has the same 'Reality vs. Fantasy' theme, one that asian directors have always felt fascinated with, master Akira Kurosawa included.



What starts this psychedelic, almost hallucinatory experience is the theft of a revolucionary device, that goes by the name of DC-Mini, that allows (or would allow) therapists to enter patients' dreams to treat their anxieties through psychotherapy. The DC-Mini was an experimental project, not oficially approved, so when one the devices is stolen and people start going insane and losing the notion between reality and dreams, then the group of scientists working on the project must do all they can to stop whoever's doing it.

The title character, Paprika, doesn't really exist. At least not in the 'real' world. She, a sexy redhead teenager - the hair color is the only possible explanation for the fact that she is named after a spice - is the alter ego/avatar of Dr. Chiba Atsuko (both voiced by Megumi Hayashibara), a super-brainy psychiatrist working on the DC-Mini project. Paprika only exists on the dreamworld, being able to enter people's dreams in order to help them understand them. One of her patients is Detective Kogawa who, with the help of Paprika, is trying to unveil a murder case and understanding his dreams (the film starts with a phenomenal opening scene in a circus). Kogawa finds himself, as does Atsuko and her colleague Tokita, the overweighted childish genius who invented the DC-Mini, trapped in the dreamworld and haunted by it even when they're awake - thus the constant unawarness of which world things are happening in.

Paprika, even though the the way I see it, IT IS a masterpiece, won't please Greeks and Trojans. Not at all. Wether they're anime fans or not, some will find it pretensious or impossible to fully understand. I mean, try to picture a massive parade of human-like home appliances, dancing frogs and porcelain dolls, trailed by confetti on the street. Not exacly your typical scene... Also, this isn't a film for kids, which only proves that Japan is the most advanced country in the world when it comes to animation. There's female nudity, a scene approximating sexual assault and other stuff that isn't exacly appropriate for children. It probably will require a second (or third) watch. Honestly, I'm still a little shaken. There are some pieces that I'm still trying to put together. Probably the reason why it doesn't get the perfect rating.

Although I haven't seen the documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, also by Werner Herzog, I was pretty familiarized with Dieter Dengler's life story, the German-born US Navy pilot who's only dream was to fly and who ended up being shot down during the Vietnam war as he droped bombs over villages and rice fields. Dengler was captured and held prisoner in a Vietcong camp in Laos, from where he would escape and eventually be rescued after 23 days on the run.



From all of history's documented escapes not one comes even close to being compared to Dieter Dengler's. This is the ultimate story of survival. A story that was 'born' to be put on film. Apart, obviously, from Klaus Kinski, with whom he shared an apartment when he was 13, Dengler was one of Herzog's closest friends. Besides the common origin, they both shared a knowledge of survival and a primal urge to push their physical and mental endurance to the limits. You can easily understand why they were friends and why Rescue Dawn is almost a dream come true to the Bavarian filmmaker.

Rescue Dawn is a perfect example of Herzog's 'obssession' with the 'Man vs. Nature' theme (Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Grizzly Man) giving us a clear picture of how does a man survive 23 days in the jungle with only his clothes in his body. A scene where he bites a snake and eats it alive is probably the best example. Entirely shot in the wild (Herzog is one of those filmmakers that don't believe in fake sets) - on some spectacular Southeast Asian locations around the dense Thai jungle - the film is visually exhilarating, with Herzog's allways mesmerizing cinematography and beautiful score.

Extremely detailed in every aspect - for instance, all the other six POW's Dengler met at the camp weren't forgotten: Pisidhi Indradat, Prasit Promsuwan, Prasit Thanee, Y.C. To, Duane W. Martin and Eugene DeBruin - which was to be expected, after all this film was made TO Dieter Dengler and everything in it came from his personal testimony.

Christian Bale's performace is everything you might have heard and probably more. I've been saying this for quite some time now and I'll glady repeat myself: he IS the most gifted actor of his generation. He IS the less recognized of them all. And yet, he keeps, year after year, coming up with these huge, haunting performances that everyone seems to ignore. Here, playing one of the most memorable characters he'll ever get the chance, he captures the essence of Dieter Dengler like few would. In many scenes, like the one in which he and his comrades sing "We are hungry", his bright eyes filled with hope and his childlike fearless enthusiasm remind us of a little boy called Jim he played 20 years ago in Empire of the Sun. Fantastic!

He also re-proves himself as an actor who'll put his work above everything else - himself included - subjecting himself to incredible physical transformations. The fact that he does all of his own stunts - A writer on the set heard him screaming at his director, "I'm not going to f***in' die for you, Werner!" - also helps. Still, the only real suprise is Steve Zahn. Sometimes comedians do this... He puts everything he is as a human being in that character (Duane) and the result is a nearly perfect performance, full of emotion and depth. The best of his career.

My biggest fear, considering that this is Herzog's first American dramatic feature, was that the film wouldn't tell its story in the right tone, but it does, even with its flaws. Herzog doesn't corrupt his artistic self once and, even though it doesn't (at all) reach the greatness of his masterpiece Aguirre, it is a superior film and one of the year's best.

The Warterloo Station sequence is among the most amazing and breathtaking scenes of 2007! The best film of the Bourne trilogy. Should be made an example of what a thriller is supposed to be.

"I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge."

I am a fan of Tarantino, I am, but I was slightly disappointed with his portion of the Tarantino-Rodriguez Grindhouse partnership. It's classic Tarantino with the excellent dialogue, but Death Proof seemed to be lacking something, being more likely to please Tarantino and/or blaxploitation enthusiasts, than anything else. Rodriguez's offering with Planet Terror, on the other hand, is in a whole other league, and it is miles better than Death Proof in containing the spirit of Grindhouse. It doesn't seem to have his fingerprints and stylistic references all over it, making it a truly wicked Grindhouse experience.



Robert Rodriguez has always been a flamboyant director who works from the heart - we all know the story behind El Mariachi - and his own passion rather than from a notion of the 'right' way of doing things, and that has never been so apparent as in this film. Whereas Tarantino's Death Proof was a very sedate, talky affair which hid some complex sexual politics behind its veneer of apparently shallow female ass-kickery, Planet Terror is an explosion of utter excess. Everything is ramped up to the max whether it makes sense or not. The only thing that matters to Rodriguez is whether it is cool or not, logic has no place here and the only way to watch this film is by taking the same approach.

The opening pole dance by Rose McGowan as Cherry Darling is worth the admission ticket, set to a pulsating score contributed by Rodriguez himself, which rocked the entire picture with its snazzy, catchy tune which doesn't seem the least embarrassing. It's worth more than the lap dance sequence in Death Proof, which - although undeniably sexy - becomes rather tame when compared to the energy exuded by McGowaan. But sexiness is not just her character's trait, as she does get to kick some serious ass with that machine gun to save humanity, and does so with aplomb, making her Cherry Darling one of the most interesting female action heroes out there.

And true to the spirit of Grindhouse, there are tons, and I mean really tons of blazing guns that don't seem to run out of bullets, blood that splatter, spray, and ooze, plenty of gore and many more gut spilling. Action sequences are filled with exaggeration and stylized violence, you can't help but to chuckle at them, yet cheer them on. To me, it seemed that all the cast and crew had a wonderful time trying to recreate those cheesy moments, especially with the spouting of extremely cringe-worthy lines of dialogue, and even more terrible acting, but this attitude of fun permeates through the film, even having an essential reel (with I'm sure plenty more flesh you would want to see, and probably some major plot revelations as well) gone missing.

The story plays out like a no brainer, with plenty of characters thrown in for the fun of it, and scenes which jump from one to another without much proper coherence. But who cares? All we want to see is flesh and blood. So the semblance of a story goes with an experimental biological weapon released airborne into a Texan town, and everyone starts turning into zombies one by one. It's Invasion and a gang of survivors - à la 28 Days/Weeks Later - get to put aside their differences, gang together and hold out for survival.

Freddy Rodriguez leads the group as El Wray, a typical Grindhouse hero - highly skilled and with a mysterious past - who has the hots for Cherry Darling, his ex. They're joined by Dr. Dakota Block (Marley Shelton), Sheriff Hague (Michael Biehn from Terminator) and Deputies Carlos and Tolo (Carlos Gallardo from El Mariachi and Tom Savini), experienced folks with guns and survival of course, and a hot of other recognizable faces like Stacy Ferguson, Naveen Andrews, and even Quentin Tarantino as well, in a role that is reminiscent of his character in From Dusk Till Dawn (at least that mouth of his anyway) and in a scene that will bound to make his detractors laugh out loud. Look out too for a cameo appearance (and this guy seems to be making a lot of uncredited/cameo appearances too) and his dialogue regarding the war on terror.

With his creative cameos, attention to genre detail, and meta-manipulation of the medium itself, Rodriguez's Planet Terror stands as a post-modern masterpiece, one of the best self-referential scarefests ever conceived. On par with the brilliance that is Peter Jackson's Braindead and aided by a homage-heavy aesthetic, that ranges from George A. Romero to John Carpenter and Lucio Fulci. Unabashed in its motives and fearless in how it realizes them, it's a highlight reel with very little filler, a collection of horror hits that worms its way directly into your brain and memory.

Throughout the film, Rodriguez keeps the action inventive and relentless but, crucially, he allows his actors room to breathe. After films like Poseidon and Bobby, Freddy Rodríguez finally gets to play something other than a kitchen worker, and he's brilliant as the charismatic hero, but the film ultimately belongs to Rose McGowan. She starts by dancing provocatively over the opening credits, and in the final act, she's blowing heads away with her lethal limb. Sexy, funny and dangerous, McGowan is the perfect mascot for this riotous blast of a film; and while spending so much money to recreate bad cinema may still sound like a bad idea, it doesn't feel like such a misguided move when it gives us a film as sexy, entertaining and ultimately awesome as Planet Terror.

Austria's oficial submission for this year's Academy Awards, and one of the strongest possibilities for a nomination in the "Best Foreign Language Film" category, The Counterfeiters is another WWII film, a highly welcome and important one.



Similar, in a way, to Roman Polanski's The Pianist, The Counterfeiters doesn't attempt to retell history. Nor to make judgements. Many people - proud, patriotic germans in particular - usually say they're tired of WWII films. Guess what? That's usually how holocausts are forgotten (Rwanda, Armenia, Sudan... anyone?). Fact: WWII was one of the most barbarian and shameful atrocities the human race ever did, and it's our duty to make people remember it everyday. It's Cinema's duty. Those who saw and lived those atrocities won't be around in a few years. But their memoirs will. And their stories will ALWAYS deserve to be told.

The Counterfeiters is one of those stories. Austrian writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky, like Polanski, takes the known pieces of the life of a brilliant Jewish artist who managed to survive the gas chambers, and turns it into a remarkable tale of survival and struggle for life in the most hideous circumstances imaginable. This particular story has Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) as the 'hero', who in 1936 was the toast of the Berlin underworld, a scoundrel, gambler and "king of counterfeiters". He had the talent of an artist, and the temperament of a con man - his fastidious craftsmanship enabled him to forge banknotes, passports, documents, and as long as there was a market, black or otherwise, he'd adapt to it. The one thing he couldn't get away with was being a Jew, and when he was arrested and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp he soon realized he wasn't there just for being a criminal.

But Sorowitsch proved himself adaptable inside the abyss, and became a kind of court painter to the SS, being relocated to the Sachsenhausen camp in 1944, where his talents would be exploited in a massive counterfeit operation designed by the Nazis to flood the enemy economy. In barracks separated from the rest of the camp, Sorowitsch and other hand-picked prisoners - former printers, graphic artists, typographers (The Counterfeiters) - were put to work forging banknotes so perfect that they would escape the most stringent examination. The pound notes they faked even fooled the Bank of England.



The film is based on a memoir ("The Devil's Workshop") written by Holocaust survivor Adolf Burger, who was one of the counterfeiters at Sachsenhausen and who met Salomon Smolianoff, the real man in which the main character is based on. Stories of surviving the Holocaust tend to be remarkable by definition. This one, however, has something more: a genuine moral tension. It has the force of Schindler's List, without the heroic intervention of a Schindler.

The film points up the grotesque moral perplexity Sorowitsch and the others face. It begins as soon as they arrive at the camp and are provided with civilian clothes, clothes that come attached with labels from their former owners, murdered Jews in Auschwitz. One of the prisoners, Burger (August Diehl, who has the haunted eyes of a young Christopher Walken) refuses to wear them, and later takes to sabotaging the production of dollar bills. He, unlike Sorowitsch, cannot ignore his conscience.

Ruzowitzky renders vividly the experience of living half-in, half-outside the inferno. One of the most telling sequences involves Sorowitsch being called to the house of the Nazi officer Herzog (Devid Striesow) in charge of the counterfeit scam, and then introduced to the man's wife and children. The domestic normality looks weirdly, obscenely alien.

It is said that the real-life forger, Smolianoff, did not take part in the sabotage of Operation Bernhard, as the counterfeit operation was known, and given that more than £130m was faked, it seems resistance was the exception rather than the rule; apart from Burger, it is not clear in the film which of the prisoners actually did risk their lives by delaying production. This parable of fakery and compromise asks the most difficult question: how much would you be willing to sacrifice in the interest of your own survival? And how grateful do you feel that you will probably never have to answer it?

One of the best films of 2007 and another piece of evidence - one year after The Lives of Others - that the renaissance of German-language cinema is more than just an occasional occurence.

"Existence... well, what does it matter? I exist in the best terms I can. The past is now part of my future. The present is well out of hand."

Being a Joy Division fan since pretty much the dawns of my early teenagehood (which feels like an eternity ago) I suppose there was always this impossibility of me not enjoying Control. I mean, even if the film wasn't really this good - which, trust me, it is - I'd probably still have a hard time not loving it. However, with or without emotional 'baggage', Control has in it all it takes to appeal and wonder anyone who loves films. For JD fans, on the other hand, it's obviously more than that: it's close to be the movie event of the bloody year.



Based on Deborah Curtis' autobiography Touching From a Distance, the film brilliantly balances two different perspectives of Ian Curtis' life: his relashionship with his wife, which obviously assumes more importance, and his short musician career - 3 years, to be exact - as Joy Division's vocalist and lyricist as well as his teenage years prior to that growing up in his hometown, Macclesfield. Although the information on Curtis is very short (his wife's book is the biggest source; before that it was almost unexistent) Control succeeds at giving us a look - not an explanation, just a look - at what exacly leads a genius-in-the-making to commit suicide at the age of 23.

Acclaimed photographer and music video director (for bands such as Metallica, Depeche Mode and U2), Anton Corbijn has crafted a fantastic and great looking biopic as a debut feature. Being a friend of Curtis' (or former friend) and of the rest of the band, he was the only man for the job. Despite his music video background, Corbijn never treats anything - not even the live performances - like an MTV music video. The band's performances, in which the actors actually played the songs, come across as if they were actually caught live performing. And anyone who goes to concerts knows what that sound is like. This approach contributes to the film's naturalistic and realistic look. The live performances of "Transmission", "She's Lost Control" and "Dead Souls" will be a joy to watch for any JD fan who was born after 1980.

Newcomer Sam Riley does an amazing job of channeling Ian Curtis. The biggest breakthrough of 2007. Very much like what Marion Cotillard did earlier in the year with La Vie en Rose, he doesn't just look like Curtis (the physical similarities are haunting), he actually becomes him. His voice, his gestures on stage, even the way he walks... And more importantly, he creates a credible interior life as well, revealing the contrast between Curtis' conventional life and darkly hued creative skill and enhancing his mental problems - depression and epilepsy. The rest of the cast is great. Samantha Morton is fantastic (as always) as Curtis' wife, Alexandra Maria Lara looks great as his mistress Annik, Toby Kebbell (from Dead Man's Shoes) is hilarious as the band's manager Rob Gretton, giving the film the share of humor it needed to work and Craig Parkinson is almost as good as Steve Coogan in 24 Hour Party People as Tony Wilson.

Gorgeous to look at, with its Black and White cinematography that gives it the dark/depressing 70's post-punk cool look that it needed and with an even cooler Soundtrack (Joy Division and New Order only), Control is, like I said, the movie event of the year for any true Joy Division fan, but I'm convinced that even those who know nothing about the band or the man here portrayed or who only know "Love Will Tear Us Apart" thanks to Donnie Darko will appreciate it equally.

ANOTHER great film to be added to the 2007's Best long list.

The Bourne Ultimatum's opponent for 'Best Thriller of 2007'!



Shortly after Alex and Margot got married, she is brutally murdered as they swam in the same lake they used to as childhood sweethearts. Eight years later Alex, Dr. Alex Beck, a successful pediatrician, receives an anonymous e-mail with a link of a surveillance camera, in real time, where he recognizes Margot, alive, standing in the middle of a crowd. He starts to wonder (and wishing) if that could really be her, wondering also why would she instruct him to 'tell no one'...

Given that eight years have passed, Alex is naturally upset with the whole situation, but his problems get rapidly and uncomparably worse when the police dig up two corpses near the murder site along with a key to a safe containing incriminating photos and a baseball bat with what may be Alex's blood on it. Alex finds himself under suspicion, leading him to go on the run in order to solve the mystery before the cops get hold of him.



Intense and utterly gripping thriller, Tell No One never puts the viewer in front of the character. Not once. Similar, in a way, to what Michael Haneke did in Caché, what one knows the other does too. One's shocks and uncertainties are the other's. With a smart and cracking plot (based on Harlan Coben's novel, an american best-seller that sold more in France than in the US), we're constantly unaware of what will happen next, in a massive build-up of suspense and tension that will slowly and eventually unrevel its secrets. Hard to follow at times, which demands a high level of attention, considering the number of characters and twists, but also an entertaining and thrilling ride with, on the other hand, an extremely beautiful and emotional ending.

Actor-turned-director Guillaume Canet (who you might know as Étienne from Danny Boyle's underated and misunderstood The Beach or from his leading role in one of my favourite films, Jeux d'enfants) does a suprisingly good job directing and co-writting the script. He shows talent, a lot of talent behing the camera, as well as a fondness for tracking shots, dollies in and out and long, fast paced action sequences. The AWSOME chase scene, shot in and around Paris, is probably the best example of his undeniable talent. Can't wait to see more of him, wether it's behind or in front of the camera.

Acting wise, François Cluzet OWNS the screen! He carries the film throughout the two hours with a monumental performance loaded with intensity, depth and charisma - his physical similarities with a young Dustin Hoffman are undeniable. Also, the entire - and extensive - supporting cast is flawless (there isn't one single moment of bad acting). Marie-Josée Croze (as Margot), Marina Hands (as Alex's sister Anne), Kristin Scott Thomas (perfectly fluent in french, as Alex's best friend and his sister's girlfriend), François Berléand (as the undispensable story's cop) and André Dussollier (as Margot's gruffly grieving father) all shine when they have to and have an extreme importance (even when it doesn't seem so) in the plot's development, making this an extremely rich and complex film when it comes to characters.

Personally, I have no doubts left... When it comes to making good old American/Hitchcockian suspense thrillers, no one does it like the French. Sorry, those responsible for making films actually coming to people's countries and cities may not agree, but that's just how it is. Anyway, I guess they'll just remake it with Nicolas Cage or whatever... They always do.

Not being a particular fan of the genre, or sub-genre (corporate/legal thriller), I found myself, at a certain point, incredibly thrilled and engaged while watching the film that, by its two final scenes (the closing, stand-out confrontation between Clooney and Swinton and the ending) I became completely convinced of Michael Clayton's - film and character - brilliance. A very impressive and clever script by Tony Gilroy, as well as a more than competent direction and pure excelence acting-wise. It's a film that takes you on a ride whose pleasures almost sneak up on you and are all the more satisfying because of it. The kind of smart, crisp, mainstream entertainment about serious issues like duty, ethics and justice that give Hollywood (or the part of it influenced by George Clooney, at least) some good name.

"My old man used to say to me, probably the only thing we ever really agreed on, was that whoever has the money has the power. You might wanna jot that down in your book. It's something you're gonna need to remember."

Your entire life can change in a matter of seconds. One minute you can be on top of the world, feeling as though nothing can stop you - the next minute, that entire world can be lost. Scott Frank, the talented screenwriter of Minority Report and Out of Sight, tackles this idea in his directorial début with The Lookout. And what a fucking grand début it is.



Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Chris Pratt, a popular and rich high school hockey star with a promising future, whose life is completely changed after making a few bad decisions that result in a car wreck, killing two friends and leaving him with a severe head injury. The film, while involving a bank heist, doesn't revolve around it. The star of the script is Chris, and the film picks up four years after the terrible accident, as Chris is dealing with his disability and as he tries to deal with the fact that he caused the death of people and nearly ruined another. I won't spoil any plot points, as going into this film with as little knowledge as possible will make it all the more rewarding.

One of the ways Chris is able to cope is because of the friendship of his blind room-mate Lewis, played superiorly by Jeff Daniels (aka Hollywood's most underrated actor), who he met while at the head trauma centre. Daniels makes what on script essentially looks like a secondary role one of the most memorable, and he steals every scene he's in (the one between him and Isla Fisher immediately comes to mind). Lewis is Chris' mentor and guardian of sorts, a bitterly honest and light-hearted fellow, but it's obvious that Lewis needs Chris just as much as Chris needs him - not so much for his disability as his sense of feeling needed.

Last year many people compared The Lookout to Memento, but the two films couldn't be any more different in the way they tackle the subject matter. Whereas Memento relies on the memory loss to move the story along and it is a problem that consumes the life of the protagonist, here the memory loss is simply a part of the character's overall complexity. The character and the film don't rely on the memory loss for anything but being a part of the story, not moving it along. There is no plot twist, the enjoyment comes from watching the story unfold, from watching Chris' moral struggles and digging himself deeper and deeper into trouble, all while hoping he can get out before it's too late.

I've been solidly convinced that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a fabulous actor (beyond good looks and charm) since I saw Mysterious Skin four years ago and, while Brick was a start, this film is probably what will make him become the A-list actor he probably never expected to be. His performance is magnificent, magnetic and truly worthy of awards. The subtlety, attention, and believability that Gordon-Levitt brings to his role shows how much he really understands the art of acting. He isn't just reciting his lines, he becomes this character and convinces you he feels every ounce of pain, frustration, and suffering, with each wince, each blank, yet yearning look, each time he tries so hard to be the person he once was. The particular scene where he tries to convince his boss that he can be a teller and simply blurts out what he has obviously only memorized from his little notepad teared me apart.

I couldn't be more impressed with Scott Frank. The story could have easily fallen prey to the obvious clichés and one-dimensional characters that these types of films are usually plagued with, but it's clear that Frank decided to take on the job of director to prevent that. He makes sure you know, without ever quite coming out and saying it, that Chris wants more with his life than just being a night-shift janitor at a bank; he wants his old life back. When he's approached by one of the masterminds behind the bank robbery, who knew of Chris from his high school glory days, it doesn't feel unbelievable whatsoever when Chris is suckered into their plan.

No character that Frank writes (besides maybe the creepy bank robber Bone) is one-dimensional, from mastermind Gary (played by Matthew Goode, a man who's managed to become one of my favourite actors in a span of three years), to ex-stripper Luvlee (a surprisingly good performance by Isla Fisher). He's an extremely talented writer and knows his way behind the camera enough to impress someone (i.e, me) who's rarely impressed. He's obviously been in Hollywood long enough to know how that place and that "business" works, so as long as he doesn't surround himself by fat, greedy suits, he's got a long, fruitful career ahead of him in filmmaking. He has said he has a western written that he would also like to direct; with the care and attention he put into The Lookout, count me sold on the idea without knowing any more.

I could go on and on, from James Newton Howard's emotional score to Alar Kivilo's incredibly impressive and red-ish cinematography, but some of this you should just experience yourself. The Lookout is a great character-driven story and a fantastic accomplishment by all parts involved. The choice of smart dialogue and focusing this not on the bank heist, but on the moral and internal struggle of Chris Pratt, makes this film one of the most unique and impressive first features I've seen in quite a while.

It's also a lesson (that probably only a writer could give) of storytelling and character development; after becoming so emotionally attached to the character, the final third of the film is all the more thrilling and tense. It's one of those films that remind you why you love cinema so much to begin with. It doesn't rely on the memory loss, the stylistic camera effects, cheap gimmicks, or predictable twists. It's simply the story of a young man who lost nearly everything and hurt so many he loved and how he copes with it. It is full of complex characters, a brilliant script, and even better performances all around. One of the finest films of 2007. And in a year that had There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men and Atonement, that's quite the accomplishment.

"Work is for people who can't play video games."

In Pac-Man you're set in a maze without an exit, and from the start face an onslaught of enemies that drift toward you from multiple directions. A level will be completed, and another, and another positing identical endurances, will begin. It is a game of simplicity, repetition, and oppression. Addictive and without formal conclusion, it is an epitome of classic gaming.



To be renowned for mastery of this and other classic arcade games one must demonstrate exemplary eye-hand coordination and extraordinary patience. Billy Mitchell was the first to record a so-called perfect game of Pac-Man, deemed by completing all 256 of the game's levels (after which a bug automatically defaults the session), and acquiring every bonus (this includes the digestion of every blue-rendered ghost, which, if you're unfamiliar, verges on the impossible). Mitchell's achievement required six hours in front of an arcade cabinet.

The first perfect game in Pac-Man is among a handful of near-insurmountable records that Mitchell holds in arcade gaming. He speaks of his accomplishments with total conceit, and his demeanour is at least partially earned, having enamoured him with an immense, if peculiar, celebrity in a circle obsessed with keeping score. But when an unknown and unlikely challenger threatens his greatest record, Mitchell unveils his greatest scheme ever, in attempt to hold on to his crown at any cost.

The King of Kong is a documentary that lives and dies with its subjects. At its heart it's a simple tale of two men competing, and director Seth Gordon decides very early on which of these men it is rooting for. But while the battle between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe is raging in the foreground, it's the bit players that make this film so engrossing. As it stretches from month to month and coast to coast, it's mesmerizing to see these individuals wrestle with the choice of which side to take, and whether the consequences of that decision are worth it. It's this great length of time that allows The King of Kong to be the rare documentary that shows actual growth from its subjects. These aren't characters, these are people. Some of which are able to admit their mistakes and take steps to correct them, and others who stumble blindly forward.

But when all is said and done, The King of Kong wouldn't be half the fun it is without the two main players involved, Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. Mitchell is the perfect Hollywood villain. He's calculating and arrogant, while charismatic enough to convince those who support him that he can do no wrong. As he sits on the judges' panel and reviews the tapes sent in by Steve Wiebe that challenge his record, it's quite easy to visualize how he sends out his subordinates to protect his throne, even without the filmmakers, and Mitchell himself, making it plainly obvious that he was behind every move.

Wiebe does his part by living the life of a loser with abhorrence. The star pitcher of his High School baseball team, an arm injury caused him to miss the state finals. He follows that up with being laid off the day he closes on his house, and trying a whole new career as a Middle School Science teacher. A man who is supremely talented but never has the drive to force his way into the limelight, he drowns his sorrows in an unlikely place, the Donkey Kong machine that sits in his garage. As he creeps closer and closer to the record his family and friends are merely happy that he has something, anything, that he can finally take some pride in and drag himself out of his stupor. But when he destroys a record more then 20 years old, Steve finally is thrust into a situation that will cause him to stand up for himself. Realizing his record was unjustly thrown out, he travels across the country to set the record in person, to prove once and for all his record is legit. But that's only the beginning of his struggles for recognition and self-worth.

It's probably pretty simple for people to write off The King of Kong without ever watching it. I mean seriously, who wants to watch a bunch of nerds who think a great Centipede score will help you get girls? And while the film doesn't set out to be anything more then the quest for a righteous Donkey Kong score, somewhere along the way it morphs into an epic tale of good versus evil, and a metaphor for the struggle of trying to get through life with your head above water.

It's rare in this day and age that one can become so enraptured by a film that you truly root for someone to succeed. Most film-goers, myself included, are far more content to out-think and out-guess the filmmakers, but The King of Kong is a rogue barrel to even the most pretentious cinephile, coming out of nowhere to smack you back to your childhood innocence, showing you that it's not only OK to enjoy watching adults play little kids games, but to love every minute of it.

The film that won more smiles (not laughs) from me in 2007.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to catch Scorsese on American Gangster Films on TV. A 20-minute bloody history lesson given by the greatest filmmaker alive. At a certain point Mr. Scorsese said something like "the greatest thing American Cinema ever offered the world was the Gangster genre". Could he possibly be more right?



Inspired by Mark Jacobson's NY magazine article "Return of Superfly", Steven Zaillian's dense and clever screenplay tracks the rise of Frank Lucas (Washington), former driver/bodyguard/collector of crime boss Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson. Besides his employer, Johnson was Lucas' mentor, the man who thought him everything he knew. So when he dies, Lucas, now with no one to answer to, has the chance to build his own empire.

One day, as he listened the TV news in background, he has an epiphany. The journalist reported how easy it was to US soldiers in Vietnam to get addicted in heroin, considering its high purity, easy availability and relatively cheap cost. He flys to southeast Asia himself, walks into the jungle in search of the heroin's source and, with the help of his serviceman cousin, continuously buys and smuggles pure heroin to the US using military planes - in one occasion inside coffins. Basicly, he cuts out the middle man and is able to sell his "Blue Magic" for half the price of his competitors on the streets of NYC and NJ. By the mid-1970s, he's a self-made one-man mafia.

On the totally opposite side we come to know Richie Roberts (Crowe), an honest New Jersey narcotics detective with more enmity toward corrupt cops (including Josh Brolin's arrogant, greedy special investigator) than black gangsters. Early in the film, when Roberts and his partner find almost $1 million in unmarked cash, Roberts does the right thing: He turns it in. Except that's not the right thing in this Copland; the reasoning is that any cop who won't go on the take will turn against those who do. Or, as Roberts' partner puts it, "Cops kill cops they can't trust". Crucified by his peers for being honest, Roberts is 'recruted' by the feds to lead a special narcotics task force responsable for bringing Lucas down, as well as any dirty cop in town.

Just like Michael Mann did in Heat, Scott keeps his two 'superstars' apart for the better part of the film's running time (more than 2½ hours) - making them meet face to face for the first time in an utterly brilliant scene, where Richards arrests Lucas in front of a church at the sound of 'Amazing Grace' - and creating shades of moral complexity, by making us look at them separately and encouraging comparisions.

Roberts, while incorruptible on the job, is a typical divorced loner with a messy personal life. A womanizer and a a failure as a father. Lucas, on the other hand, may be a savage killer, but he's also a tender family man - brings and employs his brothers, nephews and cousins from his homeland in North Carolina and buys his 'mama' a house that looks more like a palace. He is also an extremely disciplined man who wakes up everyday at 5am. Even with all the differences, they're both two men with strong convictions who, no matter what, always do what they think is right.

The film's tone is extremely honest and raw. The violence is real and believable. Ridley Scott's direction makes it so, proving himself stunningly adept for this genre. As for the acting, Denzel Washington shines in every single scene he's in. Russel Crowe and the rest of the cast (including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Carla Gugino) is solid. Never hits a false or less-than-authentic note, but the show really is Denzel's. An enormous, enormous performance! As good, if not better than Trainning Day's. Not that it will come as a surprise, considering the people involved and the 'buzz' around it for the last year, but I'm sure American Gangster will be one of this year's most successful films. Wether awards or people's acceptance is concerned. And it should. Cause it deserves it. When that's the case, it's all good.

Still, to put (like some, so full of themselves have already) American Gangster on the same level of masterpieces such as The Godfather, Scarface or Goodfellas would be, besides foolish and exaggerated, unfair. Those films belong to a different 'universe'. Period. Coppola, DePalma and Scorsese don't need to look over their shoulders. They never will. It is however, without a doubt, one of the best films of this year and a (re)confirmation of Scorsese's statement. No one does films like this like they do - the yanks, I mean.

Wonderfully weird and hugely entertaining genre exercise. Its biggest achievement is the fact that it should please all sorts of audiences, whether art-house/asian fans or less open-minded/Hollywoodian ones. An entertainment feast.

"At the end of time, a moment will come when just one man remains. Then the moment will pass. Man will be gone. There will be nothing to show that we were ever here... but stardust."



Alright, first things first: I'm not a Sci-Fi fan. Never was, and probably never will be. Of course, that doesn't interfere (at all) with my ability to admire and appreciate sacred classics like 2001, Star Wars or Alien. I might not worship them like millions do, but I sure as hell respect them. But, present day speaking, I honestly don't think the genre has much more to offer. And this isn't a criticism, it's just the way it is. I mean, with the exception of The Matrix and Joss Whedon's "Firefly" series / Serenity, we saw nothing new in the last decade. Pretty much everything was already done. Space missions / adventures, aliens, robots, time travels... what's left? Even though I'm a pretty deep believer in the human creativity, I just think the genre is too self-limitative.

That doesn't mean, as you obviously already figured out from my rating, that I didn't enjoy Danny Boyle's attempt, with Sunshine. It might be hard to believe, given his filmography so far, but he is a genuine Sci-Fi fanatic, and his passion is pretty clear when you watch the film. Of course, I still stick to what I said before: it doesn't bring anything new. Fifty years in the future, spaceship plus eight men / women crew. Mission: save the world. I can think of half a dozen films that can fit that description. Still, Sunshine is ahead of them all.

Even though, like I said, it isn't as innovative as it would be expected from Boyle/Garland (like 28 Days Later... was) it doesn't fall in clichés either and has no predictability whatsoever. The last quarter of the film completely switches the direction in which the story was going and it goes from Sci-Fi / Drama to Suspense / Thriller in a heartbeat. The end was also pretty unexpected. No smiley happy endings and, to whoever may be able to get it, it even has its share of poetic and beautiful. Apart from that, expect the always stunning camera work from Boyle (the use of cameras on the inside of the helmets was particularly brilliant) and also a flawless cast. Even Chris Evans, an American pretty boy, is solid, which (re)proves that Boyle is the ultimate actors' director.

"So if you wake up one morning and it's a particularly beautiful day, you'll know we made it. Okay, I'm signing out."

Francis: "[Francis and Peter are beating each other up] You don't love me!
Peter: Yes I do!
Jack: I love you too, but I'm gonna mace you in the face!"



Wes Anderson was recently asked by an American interviewer about the kind of fans his films attracted. He thought for a second, before replying: "Outsiders, misfits". The interesting part is that it's insiders that tend to be the objects of Anderson's films. All the four of them, before The Darjeeling Limited - Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizou - were films populated by flunking students, high-society screw-ups, depressed magnates, sad-eyed auteurs. A psychoanalyst would probably diagnose these characters, almost all of them men, as suffering from affluenza.

The Darjeeling Limited is no different. Opening the film is Anderson's 13-minute short, Hotel Chevalier - which, if possible, I recommend to be seen in the theatre, immediately before the film, not on iTunes - best known for Natalie Portman's bare backside, a bit of an introduction to Darjeeling, featuring Jason Shwartzman's character, Jack, as he meets his ex, played by the perfectly dry and Anderson-esque Portman, in France two weeks before the feature film. The bright yellow walls of the hotel room and Jack's orange luggage clash with the downerness that is this relationship. It's perfectly quirky Anderson without the funny.

The funny comes in later as Darjeeling opens with Jack (Shwartzman) meeting his two older brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson) and Peter (Adrien Brody) in a first class sleeper car of the Indian cross-country train "The Darjeeling Limited", in a trip planned by the elder brother, the controlling and somewhat maniacal Francis, who goes so far as to hire a co-ordinator (Wally Wolodarsky), whose job it is to make sure that each day's itinerary is religiously followed. A year after their father's sudden death, the brothers haven't been in touch and Francis wants to bring them together on a 'spiritual journey' through India. What he doesn't tell them is that the real purpose of the trip is to reunite with and find their mother, played by Anderson regular Anjelica Houston, who is living in a convent at the base of the Himalayas.

The bit of dialogue with which I started this review was the best example I could find to exemplify the kind of brotherly love exhibited in The Darjeeling Limited, which is really an odyssey of total family disintegration and partial reformation. The three brothers both love and loath each other and their time on the "Darjeeling" is spent bonding, eating, smoking cigarettes, having sex with waitresses, downing Indian pain killers, and fighting with each other. Their spiritual journey actually begins when their inappropriate behavior gets them kicked off the train in the middle of India, with all of their luggage, a laminating machine, and without their trusty aide Brendan.

As is the case with most of Anderson's films, The Darjeeling Limited is a window into a poignant, mesmerising and heart warming reality where the journey matters more than the destination. By turns highly comic and then, without warning, utterly tragic, you'll laugh, (maybe) cry, and be deeply moved as the film travels across the screen with wonderful style and gorgeous cinematography.

It's really hard to put your finger on quite what makes this so special, but be assured that this is a film to be savoured in the utmost. It's a spectacle that no film lover should miss, an adventure of the spirit of an almost immoral indulgence - how else can you tolerate three wealthy Americans traversing some of the poorest areas on earth from a luxury train? The brothers are each memorable characters and the situations they are put through encompass all of human nature.

Owen is particularly impressive and shows a range and depth far beyond his lightweight comedy roles of late, and when combined with Brody (who shows for the first time he can play comedic roles) and Shwartzman, both dry and quirky enough, the three performances are good enough for us to believe they're real brothers. Amara Karan absolutely shines as Rita, the head stewardess on the train, and the small cameo by Bill Murray is the cherry on top of the cake. The orange Marc Jacobs luggage all of them seem to own becomes its own character, being carried and lugged all over the country. The same happens with India itself, perfectly captured by cinematographer Robert Yeoman, who, in the golden dust and light of the landscapes, revels the beauty of the country through which the brothers are travelling.

The usual pleasures of Anderson's work - the precise framing, eclectic soundtrack (with a lot of Indian music and several tracks from one of my favourite bands, The Kinks), and tiny marvels of production design, the offbeat humor, the well-proportioned, efficiently told story - are all present in The Darjeeling Limited, which creates a gorgeous palette out of local color. The second act includes a detour to an Indian village that's as vibrant and full of feeling as anything Anderson's done. The simplicity of his one liners - "I don't feel good about myself", "I want that Indian stewardess" or "I guess I have more healing to do" - say so much by saying so little that you find yourself in love with the film without even noticing.

You'll note that I haven't mentioned one negative aspect about the film. I could, if I wanted to, but I've learned that, when it comes to films, I love more than I hate, I'd rather focus on the good things and forget the bad ones - which is why I could never do what the so called professional critics do. I struggled a lot (probably 'cause of the film's X factor, the one that makes it so inexplainably enjoyable) before rating it as I did, but I did it because to rate it higher would be to state that it's as good as Anderson's Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, which it just isn't. Still, missing The Darjeeling Limited would be to impoverish tremendously your 2007 cinematic experience - go and witness this as soon as you can. You won't regret it.

"Ladies, we're gonna have some fun."

After the relative success of his homage to Kung Fu with the Kill Bill films, Quentin Tarantino turned his sights to the 1970s exploitation films with Death Proof, the first half of Grindhouse. Unfortunately, for us outside the US, we did not get the Grindhouse double bill with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and a host of fake trailers, but rather the longer cut of both films. Many have said that Planet Terror proved to be superior to Death Proof, but since it hit theatres first and without watching the other, I thought Tarantino's offering was pretty decent stuff.



Perhaps his detractors loathed how he made references to and probably paid homage to his own films and signature style. This spelt E-G-O, and doesn't go down well, with its plenty of foot fetish shots, reminiscent of foot massages, and if you pay attention enough, you'd spot and hear about the Big Kahuna burgers, familiar tunes over the ringtones, yellow and black striped colour schemes, the alpha female type chicks, and loads and loads of vulgarity-laced dialogue just about everything under the sun, with characters mouthing off in cars or around a dining table. That about sums up stuff from Reservoir Dogs all the way to Kill Bill.

But Death Proof is a different animal altogether. Being his own cinematographer, Tarantino has full control over the shots he wants to make, and he injects plenty of sleaze into his story - voluptuous, leggy girls of just about every ethnicy in sexy outfits (he goes as far as to make one of his characters a cheerleader) and perky butts peeking out of hot pants, flaunting their power of sexuality in alpha-female styled attitudes. It's actually two different segments in one film, each being quite different from the other in terms of themes, and style.

The first half introduces us to characters like Arlene (Venessa Ferlito), Shanna (Jordan Ladd), Jungle Julia (Syndey Poitier) and Pam (Rose McGowan), who end up in a bar doing their own thing (read: plenty of dialogue and flirting with the camera). We get introduced quite slowly to the psycho Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell, with a Snake Plissken-style scar) who, while on one hand befriends the girls, on the other we're just waiting for the action to begin. Being a stuntman, his car is "death proof," meaning it's rigged like stunt cars that provide protection for its driver, and nothing else. And if you're twiddling your thumbs for some action to take over, then be prepared to wait a bit.

You see, despite what you think Death Proof might be, it's nothing about the action, not at least until the driver takes the wheel. And when Tarantino lets it rip, out comes the blood and gore, exploitation style. Given the fake jump cuts, bad editing and scratchy film stock, it becomes near impossible to find out just which parts were censored for the local M18 version and which ones weren't. It does seem to make sense still and flow well, but you can probably bet that some bits were removed. On the other hand, we have stuff like Vanessa Ferlito's lap dance kept intact, which was omitted from the double bill. Win some and lose some. While I still say Grindhouse must have been a great experience, I don't think I would've passed on that scene.

The second half of the film is a different story altogether. For the most parts, the '70s style gets junked, maybe because it got tiring, or it's too tedious to replicate the cheesy special effects over to this story arc, where the hunter becomes the hunted. There's plenty of action, but could I say it's somewhat repetitive and lacks that vigour, until the final moments where you probably might go "that's awesomely cool." Other than that, it's more of the same, with more eye candy courtesy of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thorns and Zoë Bell (the famous New Zealand stuntwoman who made Uma Thurman's fight scenes look so real in Kill Bill), with plenty more QT styled dialogue of pop irrelevance.

While stylistically the film might want to try and resemble low budgeted '70s exploitation flicks, Death Proof juxtaposes certain modern-day elements into itself, making it somewhat messy with gizmos like cell phones and portable music players. What put a smile on my face though (besides the beautiful ladies of course), is Kurt Russell's two-faced Stuntman Mike performance. He can be nonchalant one minute, oozing indifference, and in the next, he can be so silently deranged you'd rather choose to leap from the vehicle, if you had a means to that is. Or he can be the classic road rage driver, before realizing he has bitten off more than he could chew. It's been some time having Russell on the big screen, and he's almost as awesome here as he's been throughout his entire career.

Ultimately, just one warning about the film - expect plenty of dialogue, and I mean plenty, with characters talking about sex, race, cars and about people who never appear on screen, and if you can't stand irrelevance, then steer clear. The action comes on in limited spurts, so if that's what you're after, then savour every moment when the gear shifts into overdrive. The loopy soundtrack too is a bonus, and adds some authentic exploitative flavour. Tarantino did not manage to outdo himself, but still managed to capture the right spirit in those films he wants to emulate. Probably the most purely fun film he's made since Pulp Fiction.

When I first heard of Knocked Up, back in '06, I didn't really pay much attention to it. I mean, anyone around here who knows me remotely know that I'm not exacly the biggest fan of american comedy out there. And this one seemed like just another one. Then, as time passed, I admit I got curious with all the buzz around it. Can't be just another stupid comedy, I thought. And it isn't.



I mean, it's still a comedy. Don't expect any higher, sublime message here. But, just like he did with The 40 Year Old Virgin, Judd Apatow somehow makes it more than that, giving it some sort of sense of meaning and purpose. We feel that the story is actually going somewhere, not just winning a couple of laughs from the audience. Something that normally lacks in this kind of film. Funny, hilarious in more than one occasion, with some brilliant dialogues that remind us of cult TV shows like "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared". In fact, Knocked Up is almost like a 'family reunion'. Not only Judd Apatow, but pretty much half of the cast (Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jason Segel, Martin Starr...) all worked together on those shows and it's pretty clear that they've been friends since, 'cause chemistry like that just isn't 'actable'. That's one of the reasons why the film seems so simple and honest. Never, not even once, does it cross the line (the very thin line) between funny and insulting, nor is it pretensious or, as mentioned, completely empty of meaning.

Unlike what I've read here, Knocked Up will never 'steal' Hot Fuzz the title of funniest film of the year, that's just not possible, but it's still a worthy opponent and ideal for anyone who wants to have a good time! After all, that's still one of the purposes of Cinema.

The best teen comedy since American Pie, which was 9 years ago. To describe it as hilarious is really an understatement at this point, but that's what it is. However, that's not what makes it so good. It's its honest and even sweet way of telling a story of two teenagers who supposedly only wanted to get laid before college. It's also a very deep, while subtle look at of the importance of friendship. I still say people should be more careful before calling it the 'best comedy of 2007', for they seem to forget about a film called Hot Fuzz. Anyway, that doesn't really matter, Superbad is a hell of a fun film and I hope it's only one of the first of what Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Judd Apatow and Co. will keep on writting and making in years to come.

NOTE: There's something I must get off my chest before this review. I know most of you follow the Oscars with... let's say, enthusiasm, which is totally fine with me and even normal. For that reason, I'm sure at least some of you will eventually watch "Beaufort", for being one of the five nominees in the 'Best Foreign Language Film' category. Now, "Beaufort" is a good film, it truly is, and you'll see how much I enjoyed it in a few minutes, but the truth is that it has no place in that list of nominees. Not when at least four masterpieces were left out. It wasn't even supposed to be considered, Eran Kolirin's multiple award winner "The Band's Visit" was Israel's oficial submission and considered their best chance at a nomination in years. However, over 50% of the film's dialogue was in English and it was, therefore, disqualified by AMPAS. Anyway, what's done is done...

Director Joseph Cedar, who won the prize for best director at last year's Berlin Film Festival for Beaufort, described it as following: "The film is the story of any battle in any war: it's about young people who are asked to give their lives for a mountain that will soon lose its significance. And it's about fear: contagious, intoxicating, palpable fear, a word Liraz Liberti never allowed himself to utter".

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The Liraz Liberti he was referring to is the 22-year-old junior officer and commander of Beaufort - a crusader castle located at a top of a mountain in the south of Lebanon, that dated back to the 12th century - who, with a handful of soldiers, kept that heavily guarded Israeli outpost in the months leading to its evacuation, dismantlement and destruction in May 2000. Beaufort was in Israeli power since the war in Lebanon in 1982. It was a symbol not only of Israel's might and most controversial campaign for military control of Lebanon, but also of a sacrificial struggle during which many soldiers lost their lives. On the evening of May 24, the Israeli troops withdraw from Lebanon and the base is destroyed, blown up by hundreds of mines. The powerful explosion marks the end of 18 years of Israeli occupation.

Now that the history lesson is out of the way (knowledge is never too much, right?), Beaufort is a war film that, like many recent films, is actually anti-war. We never see the opposing Hezbollah soldiers, we only hear and see the impacts of the constant artillery shelling upon Beaufort. We never see great heroism, only tragic deaths that serve no purpose and gain no ground. Not a single gun is fired, and not a single Hezbollah soldier is killed in this film. Instead, Beaufort is about the futility and stupidity of war. Why must Liraz sacrifice the lives of his men, and his own belief in his country and the military, to defend an outpost that the Israeli Defense Force will destroy in a matter of days? The story does not centre on the war, but on their retreat. The fort is still under enemy fire as Liraz prepares for the explosion, thus destroying everything that his friends and comrades have died for trying to defend.

What is strikingly absent from Beaufort is the other side, the 'enemy'. Not once do Hezbollah forces appear. Cedar's characters experience Hezbollah only through the loudspeaker system of the outpost, which throughout the film announces the launches of missiles, a sign for the soldiers to take cover. Even more frightening are the times when their surveillance fails to identify an enemy missile launch, and the outpost is hit by surprise. The effect is quite striking. Rather than experiencing a confrontation of two sides, Beaufort's defenders experience Hezbollah's attacks as though they're a force of nature, beyond human control. In Cedar's film, there is no space for human encounter, for the clash of warring soldiers as human beings.

like Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima, Cedar focuses on the experience of common soldiers to expose the way they are manipulated and abused by the military and political leadership. The Israeli troops are held inside the mountain not only by Hezbollah's guns and rocket launchers, but also by the orders of their superiors and, most importantly, by the decisions of Israeli politicians. And that's not the only similarity between Beaufort and Eastwood's 2006's double feature. Cedar's debt to Eastwood is the clearest in the visual outlook of his film. Like him, Cedar adopts a limited palette of color, controlled by brownish-grayish tone, which turns much of the film almost black and white and contributes greatly to its oppressive atmosphere. The film looks good, very very good.

Beaufort is beautiful and meaningful in its honesty, and in the care that the director took to depict these events. It is meticulously acted and photographed, and the few action sequences are dripping with tension and atmosphere. What we are treated to isn't heroism, nor the bond between soldiers. There's no patriotic, glorifying attitude towards war bollocks that's been present in most war films throughout history (including the masterpieces). Instead, the film is simply about feeling lost in events beyond our control. It is about great sacrifice for absolutely nothing. It is the statement of a fact: that war is the pure manifestation of everything that's wrong with mankind.

Winner of the Certain Regard award at this year's Cannes, The Band's Visit is one of those films that transpires simplicity and unpretentiousness. A simple story, a story about people for a change, turned into a lovely 'little' film by a young and dreamful filmmaker - Eran Kolirin.



A small Egyptian band - The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra - arrives in Israel as part of a larger mission, a cultural goodwill exchange. They are to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center. Dressed in full regalia and observing all military police protocol, the proud little group arrives at the airport with no formal nor informal reception or greeters and with no connection to their country's diplomats.

Stranded on a foreign country, struggling to communicate and unable to contact their Israeli hosts or the Egyptian consulate for help, they try to keep the excursion going, led by their stoic head officer/conductor Tewfiq, but every step they take seems to be in the wrong way and they end up in a small forgotten Israeli town in the middle of the desert. With no transport out of town until the next day, they meet Dina, a nice, open-minded restaurant owner and her two odd employees who offer them lunch and accomodation for the night. Unexpected connections and friendships develop as well as cultural and personality differences emerge...

The Band's Visit is simply a joy to watch. With tons of smart, pushing dark humor - some scenes are absolutely hilarious - and with a slight political tone, Eran Kolirin's debut film deserves every single praise it got and more. A highly relevant film that reminds us that despite political animosity and ideological differences, once thrown together, human beings of different races and nations can communicate and understand each other, even when they don't share the same language. Kolirin gets that message across with pure grace and good humor, which is never easy to accomplish. Great performances by the entire cast, stunning cinematography and exuberant score. A gem!

"And kidnappers - their point is to terrorize people. But *I* am not terrorized, and *you* can't be terrorized."

A Mighty Heart wasn't an easy film to make this film work. Some stories don't need - or at least shouldn't need - to be put into a film to get its message across. Unfortunely, these days most do, so... to tell a story worth telling, such as A Mighty Heart's, in the end never be considered condemnable.



Even though I'm sure many people hadn't even heard of Mariane Pearl until the word was out that she would be played by Angelina Jolie, her story isn't new to anyone who watches the news. It was 5 years ago. Mariane's husband, Wall Street Journal American and Jewish-born reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), on assignment in Karachi, Pakistan, vanished as he followed a promising tip which he expected to lead to a face-to-face interview with Sheik Mubarak Ali Gilani (Ikram Bhatti), a religious figure rumoured to be behind assorted al-Qaeda operations, including shoe bomber Richard Reid's aborted plot to bring down an airliner over the Atlantic. Such meeting would turn out to be a trap and Pearl kidnapped and eventually executed.

With some elements of a political thriller, the film focuses essentially on the widow's personal point of view, after all the film is based on her best-selling memoir. Mariane's five infernal weeks are the core of the film. Angelina Jolie, in the greatest performance of her career since Girl, Interrupted, is the heart and soul of A Mighty Heart, taking us on a journey of anguish, torment and vulnerability. Parallelly to Mariane's struggle, we follow the investigation into Pearl's disappearance. Winterbottom creates a breathtaking and surprisingly thrilling (considering the fact that the outcome is already known) procedural that rests largely on the passionate but ultimately impotent Pakistani police chief (a terrific performance by Irfan Khan).

Michael Winterbottom was the only man who could direct this film. As simple as that. If any other filmmaker (especially American) had gotten his hands on this script (by John Orloff( first, the result would certainly be disastrous. His objective, sometimes cold way to tell stories, allied with the humanity he manages to inject in them, makes him perfect for the job. Just like he did with In This World and The Road to Guantanamo, both extremely political films who happen to deal with the most important issue of today's global scene - the apparently never-ending conflict between the U.S. and the Middle East - he never takes sides, even dealing with such a delicate subject as terrorism. Tells the story he's supposed to, doesn't hide anything, but never adopts a 'Pro' neither an 'Anti' American approach while doing so. Few other filmmakers could achieve that.

Using the tools of documentary filmmakers and cinéma vérité (lots of-hand-held camera work, the sense that there's been limited editing, and plenty of natural, often overlapping sound), he gives the film the sense of realism it needed. Far from the brilliance of his previous works, but still an important film with an important message - of tolerance and incentive to dialogue - that also serves as a tribute to one of the most originally noble professions that ever existed - the one of Journalist.

"It always fascinated me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all, nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really love this one. When I think that its over, that I'll never see him again like this... well yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each other completely. Almost. Always the same for me. Break up, break down. Drunk up, fool around. Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can?t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses."



It was always quite obvious to me that Julie Delpy was destined to be more than just an actress. I mean, you just have to look at her to know that she's always been a deeply imaginative and creative person. Whenever I see her in a film, I can't help it, I see Celine. Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise is and will always be one of the most important and life-changing films for me. I still remember going to school the day after I first saw it - in like the 6th or 7th grade - and feeling completely unable to think of anything else. Literally. Then, the same happened with Waking Life and Before Sunrise three years ago. I've always seen those three (Delpy, Linklater and Ethan Hawke) like this unusually creative and neurotic trio that I would do anything to meet and talk to. 2 Days in Paris is the confirmation of my suspicions: that we've won a new, smart and perceptive filmmaker called Julie Delpy.

At times, 2 Days in Paris felt like a lighter, funnier version of Linklater's Before Surise/Sunset. Which, coming from me, is the best way I can think of to externalize how much I enjoyed it. Completely character-driven, with smart and funny (and I mean, REALLY funny, like in hilarious-funny) dialogue that flow as naturally as the River Seine, Delpy's writting is as sharp as a knife, intelligent and in more than one occasion, brilliant.

When we look at Delpy's script, we imagine that this story could very well have happened to her. She plays Marion, a French photographer who lives in NYC with her boyfriend, Jack (Adam Goldberg), a neurotic, hypochondriac American interior designer. They try to revive their 2-year romance with a European holiday (cliché #1). Venice is a disaster when Jack goes down with gastroenteritis and they stop over in Paris for two days. What was supposed to be a relaxing couple of days before heading home to New York ends up being two unexpected, hilarious, conflict-filled days.

One of the purposes for this 2-day stop was for Jack to meet Marion's eccentric family - wonderfully played by Delpy's real-life mother (Marie Pillet), father (Albert Delpy) and sister (Aleksia Landeau) - whose presence truly lift the film. The other was for them to pick up their cat, the adorable and overweighted Jean-Luc, who is also a scene stealer himself.

The cultural contrasts are the highlight of 2 Days in Paris. Jack's surprise/shock to see that Marion remains friends with most of her ex's and talks about everything with her parents, or his fear of talking the subway... he feels like a fish-out-of water. Anyone who has experienced both cultures - European and American - will understand the humour and the irony of those situations, in a laugh-out-loud way in some occasions. I found this aspect of the film more interesting and funny than the Woody Allen-esque relationships study that Delpy often found more important. The last third of the film is definitely the weakest, and the main reason this rating isn't more stretched, when it becomes a more typical romantic comedy. Which is everything the film isn't in the first two.

There's an enchanting quirkiness about 2 Days in Paris, which is almost entirely due to Julie Delpy. Her character is one moment an innocent, quirky girl and the next a French femme fatal. It helps that Goldberg is as good as he's ever been, playing a modern-day Woody Allen. A neurotic, compulsive smoker, kind of geeky New Yorker who speaks really fast, loves sarcasm and is aware of the real reasons why the world hates his country. The kind of American we all love, basically. There's also a delightful, priceless cameo by Daniel Brühl as a gay-like veggie who claims he's a fairy and who's been on a mission to burn down fast food restaurants in Paris. Then there's the always-fun film references - like Fritz Lang's M and Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, or Godard's Masculine-Feminine, a more subtle and hidden one - that come across as lovely tributes from one film buff to others.

The fact that the film has an obvious autobiographical feel to it will, although I don't like to put things this simplistically, prevent those who don't like Julie Delpy from enjoying the film. Those who do like her, on the other hand, will be delighted. Her approach and opinion on certain subjects will make many people call her (and her film) things like pretentious, self-absorbed, self-righteous, self-indulgent and other self's... when all she's doing, really, is showing how she sees things. How she sees the world and, of course, being a sort of romantic comedy, relationships and love. The rest, those who encourage creativity, will have a blast watching this film. I know I did, three times so far.

Many will see flaws and more flaws in 2 Days in Paris before seeing its qualities. That's OK, they always do. I suppose they've all written, directed, edited and composed the music for a film too... It has its flaws, yes, like any film made in History. It isn't a cinematic masterpiece, no. But it's also an extremely clever, enjoyable and fun film to watch. The kind of film I see myself making someday, actually. Fingers crossed.