Apple's Talk

Fanboys

Could have done without the humping, loved the bit with Shatner, and was glad the sad parts weren't overly dramatic.

The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King

Great and fast paced with the exception of the slow ending.

The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring

Wonderful depiction of a great story. A must see! =D

The Brothers Bloom

Great to see Mark Ruffalo in a film again. Good movie, by the way, with a bit of a melancholy ending.

Better Off Dead

A sit-down-and-laugh film that will have you doing just that. (=

Watchmen

sooo bad...
it was shocking crap..

Watchmen

sooo bad...
it was shocking crap..

Watchmen

sooo bad...
it was shocking crap..

Rain Man

Fantastic. That's all. :)

Clueless

Obviously not going to be the best film in the history of the world, but it's cute enough for go-around. ^____^

The Cowboy Way

Cowboys are hot. :P

^ Except Kiefer Sutherland. He has a moustache for Pete's sake!

New Year's Day

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Hope nobody Grinches on your Christmas!

Australia

truely beautiful! i love this all te way! learnt something about my country even O.o
lol
but everyone should see this

Southland Tales

what the fuck is this... someone told me this was funny....
.....
they must have been on something..
though the mysterious story kept me watching until the end, but it was crap..
one of the worst movies ive seen soo far..
>.>

Layer Cake

A middle-ranking cocaine dealer has his plans to take early retirement scuppered. Debut feature from Guy Ritchie's regular producer Matthew Vaughn, starring Daniel Craig

Try as he might, Matthew Vaughn is unable to step out of Guy Ritchie's shadow with his directorial debut. Faithfully adapted - to the finished film's detriment - by JJ Connolly from his own novel, Layer Cake is a more restrained affair than Ritchie's hyper-stylised debut Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and his follow-up Snatch (2000).

But this is not enough to distance itself from Ritchie's oeuvre. It still can't resist showing off with a belly-full of camera tricks, sketching a gallery of one-dimensional gangland thugs or choreographing designer violence to a well-timed pop song. With Lock, Stock alumni Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher cast in minor roles, Vaughn invites comparison.

At least he has the good sense to cast Daniel Craig as the nameless narrator (let's call him Mr X), a small-time but smart coke dealer. Craig conveys his character's streetwise savvy with aplomb, using enough rough charm to ensure we're with him rather than against him. With the material on offer, Craig does a solid job - though compared to some of his previous performances, notably in Sylvia and The Mother, this is an undemanding role. The trouble with Layer Cake - and this is another echo of Ritchie's work - is that it gets bogged down in a dense narrative. Dispensing with the archetypal rise-and-fall structure that drives most gangster films, it begins with a lengthy voiceover sequence in which Mr X introduces us to his world. Already as high as he wants to go, Mr X wants to quit the business and get out before he gets caught. Easier said than done. Above him in the gangland hierarchy, kingpin Jimmy Price (Cranham) enlists his help to find the missing daughter of an associate of his named Eddie Temple (Gambon). Meanwhile, Mr X's sidekick Gene (Meaney) has set up a deal involving a shipment of ecstasy - stolen by the unhinged JD (Foreman) from a gang of ruthless Serbians who have despatched an assassin to retrieve their goods.

To complicate matters, there are further sub-plots - Mr X flirting with Tammy (Miller), flighty girlfriend to Sidney (Whishaw), one of JD's gang members; Mr X's associate Morty (Harris) brutally attacking a tramp who he knew once upon a time. It's not that the story won't hold your attention. It's just, as with Ritchie's films, you'll have trouble remembering it within minutes of leaving the cinema. At least it's less cocky and cartoon-like than its stable-mates, even if the depiction of violence is equally gratuitous. With the exception of Meaney, the support cast will barely cause you to raise an eyebrow; casting the likes of Foreman and Gambon in such roles is not exactly imaginative. Even Cranham is obvious, particularly when compared to Jonathan Glazer's use of Ian McShane in Sexy Beast. But what disappoints most, as with Ritchie's films, is the sterile atmosphere. Layer Cake provides no sense of authentic criminal life in contemporary London, neither does it attempt to draw attention to the social and political backdrop that impacts upon these characters - in the way, say, John Mackenzie's The Long Good Friday did.

As pure Friday night entertainment, Layer Cake won't leave you screaming for your money back. But as an entry into the once great sub-genre that was the British gangster film, it's of minor interest.

Verdict:
Straining to deliver a more adult gangster film than Guy Ritchie has managed, Vaughn never achieves anything more than superficial story overburdened with plot. As a result, Layer Cake is like a stylised episode of 'Minder'.

The Dark Knight

"The Dark Knight" is pure adrenaline. Returning director Christopher Nolan, having dispensed with his introspective, moody origin story, now puts the Caped Crusader through a decathlon of explosions, vehicle flips, hand-to-hand combat, midair rescues and pulse-pounding suspense.

Nolan is one of our smarter directors. He builds movies around ideas and characters, and "Dark Knight" is no exception. The ideas here are not new to the movie world of cops and criminal, but in the context of a comic book movie, they ring out with startling clarity. In other words, you expect moralistic underpinnings in a Martin Scorsese movie; in a Batman movie, they hit home with renewed vigor.

None of this artistic achievement denies the re-energized Warner Bros./DC Comics franchise its commercial muscle. Those bags of money in the movie's opening bank heist are nothing compared with the worldwide boxoffice haul "Dark Knight" will take from theaters. Repeat viewings are a certainty.
Repeat viewings might also be a necessity. That adrenaline rush comes at a cost: With the film's race-car pace, noise levels, throbbing music and density of stratagems, no one will follow all the plot points at first glance. Not that the story with its double crosses and ingenious plans isn't clear, but to enjoy the full glory of these urban battlefield strategies, multiple viewings are required.

"Dark Knight" revolves around notions of the yin and yang between Hero and Villain and of those gray areas where social conscience and individuality collide. Thinking logically, Nolan and his co-writer/brother Jonathan, working from a story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, imagine that the heroism of Bruce Wayne's Batman (a returning Christian Bale) is a double-edged sword. Cleaning up the streets of Gotham City turns the crime cartels into an even more dangerous beast that, once cornered, resorts to its own doomsday machine: the maniacally clever and criminally amoral Joker (the late Heath Ledger). And vigilante justice is nonetheless "justice" from outside the law. So who or what polices him?

Running for cover, the mob head (Eric Roberts) first takes refuge with a Hong Kong crime mogul (Chin Han). Then when Batman takes him down, he and his fellow mobsters hold their noses and in desperation settle on a man who knows no rules and plays everyone against one another. The Joker relishes the assignment precisely because of his "admiration" for the Dark Knight. In one key confrontation, the Joker purrs to Batman, like a bride to a groom, "You complete me." The criminal clown, his makeup designed to emphasize his facial deformations, sees in a man dressed up in a bat suit "a freak like me."


Seemingly on the side of good are the city's White Knight, District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart); his girlfriend/Assistant DA Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) -- and, if you recall from "Batman Begins," Bruce Wayne's longtime love -- and police Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman). But loyalties are easily dislodged by threats or money. The Joker's true purpose, besides amusing himself trying to outwit Batman, is to see if he can "turn" the White Knight to his dark side.

One wishes Nolan had cast a different actor than Eckhart as this White Knight. Although very good at playing duplicitousness and irony -- witness "Thank You for Smoking" -- Eckhart never quite seems the crusader presumably intended.

The Joker, though, sees everyone as two-faced, even Batman, in his estimation. When confronted by pure evil -- and there is a kind of purity to the Joker's rule of no rules -- what can a vigilante do but violate his own moral code? The Joker means to push Batman beyond those limits.

With six major action sequences shot with Imax cameras, Nolan pushes his own cinematic envelope. If the action in "Batman Begins" received ho-hum reviews in some quarters, this won't happen with "Dark Knight." Batman flies around the skyscrapers of Gotham and Hong Kong, rips through any number of villains with his martial arts, tears through streets in his armor-clad, two-wheeled Bat-Pod and has more tech backup than James Bond. While all modern movie action is visual-effects driven, the stunt work in "Dark Knight" looks like it's happening on the streets and not in a computer.

Bale again brilliantly personifies all the deep traumas and misgivings of Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne. A bit of Hamlet is in this Batman. Ledger's performance is a beauty. His Joker has a slow cadence of speech, as if weighing words for maximum mischief and contempt. He moves languidly as if to savor his dark deeds, his head and body jerking at times from an overload of brain impulses.

Michael Caine's butler extraordinaire, Alfred, and Morgan Freeman's scientific genius, Lucius, have settled into their dutiful roles as oases of the expected when all else is unexpected. Gyllenhaal is not exactly wasted, but she can't do much with a tissue-thin heroine. Oldman as the all-too-human cop is a quiet triumph in superb character acting.

The Towering Inferno

Hot off the heels of the success of "The Poseidon Adventure," producer Irwin Allen chose to follow up that seaworthy disaster epic with yet another excursion in peril: "The Towering Inferno", which went on to become an even bigger box office success than its predecessor, and remains to this day one of the most suspenseful and potent thrillers ever to come from a Hollywood studio. Much like the circumstances surrounding the Titanic disaster, those which enshroud the sudden and deadly fire that engulfs the newly-built Glass Tower in San Francisco stem from one thing: human arrogance. The building's owner (William Holden) is convinced that nothing can bring his structure to its knees, despite the knowledge that his son-in-law (Richard Chamberlain) was behind the decision to use faulty electrical wiring. Even with the warnings of the tower's chief architect (Paul Newman), who takes every opportunity to advise against holding off the dedication ceremony until a later date, the gala still goes on as planned, resulting in the entrapment of hundreds of people 135 stories up, with the flames chewing up their precious little time for a rescue effort.

Running at a broad two-and-a-half hours, John Guillerman's technically brilliant ode to the hubris of mankind is a spectacle that, like smoke, literally takes one's breath away with a stunning array of tightly-knit action sequences marked by escalating tension and unbearable suspense. Even when compared to today's more modern methods of special effects wizardry, the visuals that unfold within "The Towering Inferno" still manage to strike a nerve with full vigor. A vast collection of characters played by an ensemble cast to die for leaves room for speculation about who will and won't make it through the night; some deaths will surprise you, as will some of the survivals. Although there are times when character development seems a bit scant, the sheer intensity of it all more than makes up for any lapses we may come across. And a line found at the end of the film still manages to retain resonance in this post-September 11th nation of ours: looking up at the smoldering ruins of the tower, Steve McQueen's fire chief remarks, "One of these days, they're going to kill 10,000 in one of these firetraps." If only we knew now what he knew then.

Secret Window

Depp is definitely the highlight of the movie, which is good since he's the character the movie revolves around. He creates Rainey just as completely as he created Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. In interacting with his ex-wife (Maria Bello) we can see the pain and the love he still holds for her. Rainey's spats with her boyfriend Ted (Timothy Hutton) show his anger. Yet none of that holds a candle to his conversations with himself. Rainey spends at least a third of the film alone, but we never feel that he's isolated. Out-of-nowhere quips and commentary about the situations Rainey finds himself in provide real depth to Rainey as a struggling writer. That is where the real genius of Depp's work on this character comes from.

Playing the nemesis to Rainey is John Turturro, hidden in the character of John Shooter, a farmer from Mississippi who claims Rainey stole his story and released it as a short entitled "Secret Window". Shooter gives a deadline for Rainey to prove he wrote it first and warns him to keep the subject just between the two of them. When Rainey fails to do so, Shooter becomes calmly psychotic, taking action to keep Rainey where he wants him, but always with a self-justified demeanor when appearing on screen. He presents himself as a man who is confident that he is right and will go to any lengths to show that he has been wronged, including eliminating Rainey's entire world if that's what it takes. His dedication becomes more frightening as the movie evolves, especially as he warns Rainey to be careful in proving him wrong, because if he is wrong, then he must be crazy, and as a crazy man he might really be dangerous.

Writer/Director David Koepp (writer of Spider-Man and Jurassic Park and director of Stir of Echoes) does an excellent job of bringing Secret Window to the screen. On the writing side he has taken a short story by Stephen King and created a strong and suspenseful plot, highlighted by complete and memorable characters as a solid base for his actors to work with. On the directorial side, he understands how a psychological thriller should work and makes his movie follow those rules. The movie builds just as a story of this type should and the audience is never ahead of the movie. To ensure this, the movie holds a Shyamalan-size twist that I won't even hint at, but that makes perfect sense as it's revealed.

Secret Window is a fantastic foray into the front of psychological thrillers, a front that too many movies fail in attempting. With Koepp's storytelling and Depp's ingenious acting abilities, this is a film that will keep audiences interested and on the edge of their seats as the story unfolds.

The Matador

"The Matador" is a simple, straightforward film that breaks down into two acts, Julian and Greg in Mexico City, and Julian, Greg, and Greg's wife Bean (Hope Davis) in Denver 6 months later. The ending and resolution to Julian's problems are not really all that important, because the film is about the interaction between the film's primary characters played by Kinnear and Brosnan. The two men do great work, first in their awkward meeting in the hotel lobby bar, then later during a lengthy sequence where Julian teaches Danny the tricks of the trade, namely how to set up, and then take out, the target. "The Matador" is essentially a 3-person play with Julian, Danny, and later on, Bean.

Sold as a comedy, "The Matador" isn't laugh out loud funny enough to be called funny. The more appropriate description might be amusing. There aren't any major punch lines to be had, and although the film elicits a few chuckles here and there, it's really not written by Shepard as a "hijinks ensue" type of movie. And unlike Cusack's "Grosse Pointe Blank", Shepard's movie is almost completely devoid of action. We see Julian take aim with his weapons throughout the movie, but there is never any blood shown onscreen. In fact, the whole profession of assassination is treated like just another job to be performed by someone with a low morale threshold. As with "Grosse Pointe", "The Matador's" best moments involve people reacting casually to Julian's profession, as if they stumble across international assassins at least once a week.

"The Matador" is worth watching just to see Pierce Brosnan dump his suave 007 persona for a character that is rather despicable, although despicable and affable at the same time, if such a thing is possible. Julian likes his women young, his liquor doubled, and his sex paid for. Yet, despite his many, many scruples (he readily admits he's a prick), when offered a job to kill someone, he refuses for the client's sake. As the Ned Flanders to Julian's Homer Simpson, Greg Kinnear does a fine job, but it's nothing he hasn't done in other movies. As such, Kinnear's Danny doesn't quite stand out as much as Brosnan's Julian, and I suspect that's why Brosnan chose the role in the first place. It allows him to stretch, to show his comedic flair, and who better than straight-laced Greg Kinnear to play against?

"The Matador" isn't a great movie, which may seem like a strange thing to say after all the time I've spent in this review praising Brosnan and Kinnear's performances. To be sure, the rapport between the two men is undeniable and is really what makes the film as worthwhile as it is. The same with Hope Davis, who easily steals the show when her character gets more than a cameo appearance in the second half. Still, there's this nagging feeling that "The Matador" is a retread, and the film never really manages to convince otherwise. Plus, the fact that it's a movie about a hitman, and there are no action scenes whatsoever, is somewhat disappointing.