Movies I saw in 2008

A true classic Russian film, which is played every year on New Year's Eve, that seems to represent on itself the best of the Russian spirit. Highly recommended.

Moving movie about Manuela, a mother who needs to reinvent her life after the tragic death of her only son. During her mourn journey she will find a series of female characters which will play a big role into her new life, including a pregnant nun which contracted VIH from someone very close to Manuela and a transvestite, Agrado, whose particular way of seeing life will help Manuela to struggle her demons from the past and present. Excellent plot and performances, not a surprise for an Almodovar's film.

Brilliant. Great cinematography and storytelling at an adequate pace.

Almost perfect in every sense. Recommended if you like serial-killer thrillers. We warned though this is not gore, it's more in the venue of Se7en: Psychological thriller.

This is an awesome Russian movie depicting the Afghan war, au contraire to Hollywood movies, this is more focused on the human drama and uselessness of war. What makes thos movie unique es the good balance between action, drama and even humor.

Although I absolutely don't like musicals I must say that I enjoyed this one and that DO means a lot! Why? Firstly the music is very well done and is catchy. Secondly, the plot about discrimination (racial and by looks) and overcoming it by means of music and dance really appealed to me.

Scary and oppressive film, will keep you wondering "what's happening next". Good enough for some genuine chills but not a masterpiece.

Interesting movie about a pilot who crashed during his first mission in the Vietnam War and is taken as prisoner by Charlie. Excellent cinematography, specially the slow-motion introduction scene of bombings in the jungle; acting is also good though annoyed me the attitude of "all is under control" by the protagonist which seems more like in a pioneer's camp instead of a prisoner's.

Funny comedy that exploits an interesting idea about a future that is not exactly as we use to imagine.

Entertaining movie, great acting, beautiful cinematography but seriously lacking of any plot direction; seriously I couldn't find a clue about what they were fighting for. I give it 3 1/2 stars cos' although the movie went nowhere, it entertained myself and I enjoyed the fighting scenes.

What a beautiful movie, if this can be called a movie... indeed, the "home-video" texture and feeling plus the effortless performances and simplicity of the plot makes you wonder if this is really a movie or just the life of some very ordinary people, just like you or me. Is in this particular feature that resides all the magic of tis masterpiece. Extremely recommended, watch it!

Excellent 3D animation film with superbly done characters and a entertaining plot make this film a great one to watch.

A few, very FEW scary parts, but overall slow and uninteresting and with a ending which was disappointing.

Excellent, a true Italian classic of horror! The best use of color in any movie I have seen...and Goblin's soundtrack is simply put mindblowing. This horror movie is one of the few I could watch over and over again.

This comedy sucks in so many levels that I was praying for it to finish soon. 1 star cos' at least it went on the right track for the first 15 minutes.

Juno is probably one of the most overrated film I have ever seen! From the opening sequence I knew I was wrong to ever think that this film might be enjoyable viewing. Juno as a character is possibly the most arrogant and annoying and stupid I have ever seen, a truly characterization of modern teenage stupidity, incapable of thinking out of their small dumb box... this is supposed to be funny? This piece of crap has no morals whatsoever, I mean, we all know that abortion of giving away your child is the easiest road to take: does this deserve a movie? I hated this movie basically for the same reason I hated "Into the Wild":The main character motivations/inner world doesn't deserve to be put on screen.

This is a cheesy girl comedy, when watching this you should not have higher hopes other than to expect to see air-headed girls living on their perfect world. Don't go into this movie with high expectation and you may enjoy it.

Very good, above-average apocalyptical-zombie movie about a virus who has nearly destroyed human life on Earth. More interesting for its thriller features rather than horror.

Pretty much like the first part, but with a somewhat less interesting history and performances; fewer surprises and goosebumps.

Entertaining Indiana Jones like movie about a modern day hero in the same fashion. Great for some good time spent with a beer and a can of chips.

In the same fashion as the first part but somehow didn't manage to be as captivating and interesting... good enough though for spending some time with a beer and chips again.

An excellent thriller which shows what could happen in this cyber jungle of the internet when a wacko decides to kill people and broadcast the murders live on his own website. The plot and killings are very well though out, but I have to give it minus 1 star cos' they reveal who's the murderer way too early on the film; it could have been more effective to reveal the murderer on the very last second.

An amazing, terrifying, painful and intense experience. If you are a man you will be scared to death and hoping not to suffer something similar in your life. Top-notch performances and excellent cinematography, but what makes this movie really shine is the blurry line between what we perceive as the "good" and the "bad".

Once Upon a Time in America is an almost 4 hour long experience about the lives of four Jewish friends who grew up in the lower east side of New York in the 1920s; but most important, it's a film about friendship, love, greed and time. It focuses primarily on the life of David Aranson, better known as "Noodles". Noodles begins an unlikely friendship with Max Bercovitz, which leads him into a life of crime.

It's fair to say that this film is much more character-driven than it is action-driven. Each of the characters come alive as the story progresses from the 1920s to the 1930s and eventually to the late 1960s where the culmination of this lifelong drama occurs. I haven't seen many gangster movies in my life, I have not even seen The Godfather, so I cannot compare this one to others. The entire movie has a surreal dream-like quality to it, and is replete with symbolism and allegory. The soundtrack is great addition to the film.

If I would have to use one word to describe this film though, it would be 'ambiguous'. Many scenes and lines can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Nothing is more ambiguous and ambivalent than the central character of 'Noodles', played masterfully by Robert DeNiro. He is awkward and clumsy, yet he is cool and quick-witted. He is calm and collected, yet extraordinarily passionate. He is cruel, yet compassionate. Tough, yet very tender.

For the most part insipid and without substance, loose narrative and acting, doesn't succeed as comedy.

Gosh, this movie was truly "what a surprise!!" Let's see...first, I'm someone who's hard to get scared, that means that bowels, liters of blood and gore doesn't make and impact on me at all; I'm more in the "supernatural/ghost" type of horror movies. The Orphanage is exactly this, a movie which is full of supernatural happenings and with a story who escalates slowly into a nightmare. Watch it! specially on the cinema, the sound edition is amazing and you'll find yourself on the bottom of your seat when they try to unveil the orphanage mysteries with the help of a medium.

Magical, poetical, deep and beautiful; those four words easily describe what could easily be one of the most profound and touching movies about fate, love and life that I have ever seen. Aronofsky makes a good work at keeping the right pace and mixing characters/times to unfold very slowly the essence of this film; nevertheless, I feel that at times he tried too hard to make things too metaphorical to be understood at a first sight. He also threw some heavy imagery related to one religion that, in my humble opinion, ruined the global sense of life as being something inherent to humankind, regardless of religion.

What a shame to see in a film of such caliber some poor animated and executed CGI monsters!! Really, the movie was totally screwed up by this poor decision... but not only this does screw up this movie: the story was unconvincing, the whole idea of the plot was unclear to me (ok, so he's gonna save the Earth, but who cares??). There are some serious problems too, for example William talks to mannequins cos' he's so hungry for some human contact after having his dog as his only company (but when he finds some real humans, and even holds a boy in his arms, he doesn't give a damn...WTF?). This kind of incongruence played so bad against this film that what could have been a great film ended being another one in the bunch. 28 Days Later, being pretty similar, kicks this film bad ass and balls really hard.

Patrick Süskind's novel "das Parfum" from which this film was adapted to screenplay could probably be one of the hardest-to-adapt books of history: how do you show something as vague as an scent through images? Transmitting ideas is hard to do, transmitting abstract things is harder, but transmitting scents and its power in a way as effective as in Süskind's novel is even harder... and this is were this movie fails. Although the original plot remains virtually untouched, the director never manages to create and impact as huge as when you read the superbly done descriptions of what Grenouille smells, something that cannot be tolerated when the true protagonists in this story are nothing but scents. Imagine yourself losing your sense of smell completely...now imagine yourself walking through this world, unable to sense any smell at all, not good, not even bad...nothing at all...if you can imagine that then you'll get a good feeling about what is missing on this movie.

Dammit, I hate to watch a film that had sooo many great reviews just realize that is a piece of crap...and this movie falls in that category. I have one big complain about this movie and is about what they were trying to achieve with this: were they trying to create a fairly accurate representation of history? Or where they trying to create a comic-style representation of events? Is this dual nature of the movie what totally ruined it, I mean, come on, WTF were all those monsters on the Persian Army? and those samurai/ninjas that were supposed to be the Immortals?
Is if this was not enough to make things bad then you have 75% of the movie being battles with some really over done slow-motion that add nothing but more runtime. At least this movie had some great image treatment, as a purely visual experience it earned 1 star.

Really funny comedy, I was expecting it to be lame but I was surprised to see that it was indeed funny...the story of 2 rivals having to become partners was entertaining :)
It was cool too to see some references to real figure skaters, for example the great Plushenko and his "Sex Bomb" performance of 2001. It was funny too to see that in the "competitions" were no Russians competing and that their figure skaters scored almost perfect! Ohh, this Americans make me laugh with their imagination :D

Though truly beautifully shot, El Laberinto del Fauno's 2-sided scenario with the Good v/s Evil children's-picture on the one side and a drama/war-movie on the other, virtually provides no deeper layers: it's a "what you see is what you get" type of film.

What annoyed me the most was the fact that it was almost like watching 2 different movies, those 2 worlds never completely merge one into the other; characters from 1 world will never take part in the other, with the exception of Ofelia, but again, her actions don't have any greater impact neither in the war-world or her princess' world.

Also, there is just nothing subtle in the story that draws you in, I found it all practically superficial and cliché, a all too-linear type of narrative and with a result that was known in the first 15 minutes of the film.

Great things about this movie: Colors, textures, music, acting. I should not to forget the crude graphic violence that reminds you that we are watching a story which takes places under a fascist regime, just in case that fairies and magic caused you to forget about this fact. Not a bad movie, but could have been a lot better.

In the technical sense, the film is well directed and edited. The cast is spectacular with solid performances by all; including Alan Alda and Samuel L. Jackson who simply put is spectacular. The characters are very believable and no one actor overshadows another... the film has balance, is well paced and does not confuse the viewer.

While this move is set around a newspaper and boxing, this is really a movie about fathers and sons. It embraces the understanding that we are not all perfect and that it is OK not to be. It dwells at the dilemma of what fathers must do when their children find out that they have flaws, and the pressure sons have to live up to the heroics of their fathers. This is the kind of film that you will go and see and then talk about for hours afterwards. Highly recommended!

A simple comedy with some funny moments, nothing spectacular though. Martin Lawrence is terrific as Terrance, Tim Robbins as usual overacts on his role as...Tim Robbins.

Painfully boring.

An enjoyable romantic comedy in the same vein as "Groundhog Day". This movie is so much more than what you may think at first; It takes you on an emotional roller coaster: It is both hilarious and touching.

I would recommend this to anyone that likes comedies or romantic comedies.

Totally lame! The performances are good, not completely up to the caliber of the actors involved. The plot as a whole made not sense to me at all. I understand the fact of being an old couple, with good times full of complicity, friendship, and sexual attraction long gone by, but I doubt that out of boredom people would get in situations as the ones showed here, and this is so much more true when those involved are old/mature people. I don't know...maybe it's just me, maybe I am not old enough yet to fully appreciate this movie, could it be that I will learn to like it once I'm old and boring?

Why is it that every time I watch a Russian film I fall in love with it? Maybe is due to it being just "different" to what I was used in years of watching US ("American" to those who call themselves Americans) crap, or maybe is it because they have a soul and portrays emotions, desires and hopes which are universal. This movie was beautiful in every sense: beautiful shots, some vanguard cinematography and a plot simple in itself, but also complex due to the motivations and decisions of the protagonists that change things along the way. This is a must watch.

I have always been a lover of music, it makes my days shine and fulfills this soul of emotions and energy to live; I cannot live without music in my life... when I discover a new band, a new song that makes my head/heart explode of emotions I feel happy and complete. For this reasons I enjoyed this film so much, it has so much heart in it, it's so full of emotions... I felt completely in the same wave with the characters and their feelings for music. Music is everywhere, certainly you have to listen to it carefully, and if you don't pay attention or are one of those with empty souls you won't discover anything new or enjoy as much as I do, nor enjoy this film.

What a piece of crap! The filmmakers did a surprisingly good job at slaughtering the novel and making this... The film has no soul at all!! (how ironic when this is exactly one of the most important things and central point of the novel). Right from the beginning you feel that something isn't going as it should be; 45 minutes later you still have the same feeling but amplified. When you are praying and praying for a film to finish there's something rotten for sure.

Classical Italian horror, lots of gore and not scary at all. At least there was a somewhat interesting plot.

Having not seen yet Jean-Pierre Jeunet's (minus Marc Caro), "Amelie", but having registered much of the hype, I was interested to see "City Of Lost Children". I didn't know what to expect, but I was overjoyed to find this film to be perhaps one of the best I have ever seen.

Its magnificently surrealist cinematography and breathtaking performances gave it all the makings of perfect art-house cinema. Moments of completely bizarre and alienating surrealism set it well and truly apart from the completely average Hollywood fantasies that get much more recognition and viewing from mainstream audiences. For modern audiences, use of special effects is often credited with enormous respect, yet Jeunet and Caro exhibit a magnificent and disarming ability to create a completely otherworldly atmosphere simply through emotion and imagery without needing the latest in digital effects. The result was something so much more fulfilling than "Lord Of The Rings" or "The Matrix", both of which were visually spectacular yet offered so much less as food for thought. An astonishingly mature performance from child actor Judith Vittet as Miette made this film all the more enjoyable - some actors of twice her age can only hope to have a third of her talent.

"The City Of Lost Children" was truly a brilliant film in which Jeunet and Caro have presented their viewers with a powerful and breathtaking analysis of perception and imagination. I guess I need to watch "Delicatessen" now.

Wow, this one was a surprise. I read somewhere it was good but it met and surpassed all my expectations. High Tension is a very good description of what I felt through the entire film, there's virtually no second of relief, danger is lurking.

SPOILER ALERT

This French slasher film rises above many of its genre because it is intelligent. Like in "Identity", we see through the mind of a girl who suffers multiple personalities. To some the movie didn't make sense at all...maybe this film is too smart for them. For me the explanation to all is that almost everything that happens in the film is just the alibi of the girl who has been captured for murder, she's giving her version of things, she's imagining a story to explain everything... that's why she asks "Is it recording?" at the beginning.

The only problem with this movie, to my eyes, were the deaths, some of them looked unrealistic.

A classic of the genre, The Omen, is more focused into the plot itself rather than into gore or cheap jumps. It's an excellent movie, but when I watch a horror film I wanna be scared and this film didn't scare me at all; surely for some Demian or the female servant are scary, not for me. I should not forget to mention the excellent work done on the deaths, the hanging is awesome, the decapitation is masterful done, and the fall into the ambulance is like a real fall would look like.

This is movie is one of those pieces of crap that turn to be some people's all-time favorite and you keep wondering and scratching your head asking to yourself why?? Surely could be the chic factor, a French film, French is cool ...therefore I'm cool if I like Amelie...let's see:
Everything in the movie is too happy in a too sweet way, no deep layers or substance here. The soundtrack is the most stereotyped soundtrack I have listened to. The main character is simply a nut job!! This girl is just plain stupid, with no life and suddenly feels the urge to interfere with other peoples' lives.

The only thing that I enjoyed on this piece of crap was the cinematography.

Excellent movie! Despite of all the script happening on 1 location, the intelligent dialogs keep you interested through all the movie to the point you don't even notice how much time has passes since the beginning. Highly recommended!

First of all the cinematography was great. The whole movie was dark, and creepy but not to the point where you are sitting there going "wow this movie is too dark and I can't see anything." Yes, it does start off a little bit predictable and cliché but even so, there are a lot of things thrown in there that are not so predictable, and after the first half hour or so there is something about it that just takes a turn for the best and i think it was very original and creative. The music, the story, and just the fact that you stay interested. I believe the fact the all the sound dies out when Mary Shaw is about to come get you is simple yet very affective and you definitely can not take your eyes away from the screen for those few moments..all sound dying out makes you feel some kind oppression that is stronger than with any kind of musical score or sound effects .

The best things is that at least it's not ANOTHER slasher film!!! Is refreshing to see horror movies about other themes other than stabbings/serial killers.

I loved the way the director shows the harassment and pain that Carrie must face on her life, how she must struggle not only at school but also at home with a mother that is a religious fanatic that prevents Carrie from knowing the real world. Sissy Spacek is just amazing on her role as Carrie, you must watch her face expression at the ending!

Wow, this is one of those films that give you a sensation of happiness after the credits appear... We all know how most chick-flicks fall under the category of "guilty pleasures", right? Well, Love Actually is not one of them because while it does indeed have chick-flick tendencies, it is a well-made, heartfelt and original film. You never ever need to feel guilty about enjoying it, even as a guy. What sets it apart from the guilty pleasures is its whole approach to love; it doesn't have to be between a young, hot couple but can occur in the unlikeliest of people and in the unlikeliest of times. Here we finally have a romantic comedy that manages to avoid the cheesiest clichés, but is still rich in romance. In Love Actually, we get to follow a multitude of characters in story lines that gradually intertwine. My favorite one was actually between a father (Liam Neeson) and his son.

Without spoiling anything, it must be put forward that not all story lines end happily or even traditionally. There is no grand romantic ending for all couples, nor is there a big heart-breaking finish to any. Love Actually treats its relationship much like reality--sometimes a relationship works out--sometimes it doesn't.

A classic of sci-fi, perfect on every sense...not much to add, right?

Mean Girls is what a large number of people would consider a silly teen comedy. It tells the story of a previously home-schooled, brought up in Africa, adolescent who enters a cliquish high school environment. Essentially the film focuses our attention on a number of psychological issues touched in almost every similar teen movie. In the beginning the issue is adaptation to a new environment, and as the movie unfolds it centers on social cliques, female friend relationships, social prejudice, social influence, rivalry, or as the professor I heard put it - relational aggression.

What is especially interesting about the movie, in my opinion, is that it illustrates an unbelievably highly stratified societal group, and thus helps the viewer unequivocally identify with and easily take a stand on the issues discussed. Metaphorically it serves as a microscope for us to observe social interactions with. Moreover the actions of the protagonists are so blatantly right or wrong that they eliminate any ambiguity that might arise of considering the things happening in another environment or under other circumstances. That way the viewer simply focuses on the darkest characteristics of female interactions in society. In this sense the film is not about adolescent girls and their experiences in high school but rather about the most negative features of female friend relations in adolescence.

The very same genuineness of the film makes it so hilarious at many points. What prevents us from laughing at the ridiculous social trends, prejudices, and many people's beliefs, most possibly including ours, in reality is that our actual emotions and thoughts rarely come up to the surface. Even our actions in most situations are covert. Yet, paradoxically, our way of thinking is shaped by society which constitutes of other people who are also as secretive in this sense as we are. And this covert way of feeling and thinking contributes greatly to the growth of prejudice, misunderstanding, and ... meanness.

Revealing a prejudice I hold, I have always believed that the single most important objective of a film is to provide food for thought. Reccomended.

Very entertaining, an interesting plot that gradually turns from some sci-fi into the thriller genre.

Surely it's a stupid movie, but when you are sitting through a 12 hours flight even a slow-motion turtle's mating act is pretty damn fun and interesting.